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July 2, 1883 



Price, 25 Cents. 

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Copyright, 1883, by Fttnk & Wasvallb. 
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INDIA, WHAT CAN IT TEACH US? 

By MAX MULLER. 

Max Miiller stands in the front rank of the noblest geniuses and best scholars of our 
age. It is not necessary to speak of his wonderful abilities and profound learning. 
Had any proof of the above estimate of him been wanting, this book, " India, What 
CAN IT Trach Us ?" would have abundantly supplied it. The subject of the book 
was first discussed in a series of lectures which he was invited to deliver before the 
students of the University of Cambridge, England, by the Authorities of that venerable 
seat of learning. They were then put together in a book, and we now have the pleasure 
of giving them in this cheap form to our American readers. The American edition has 
been greatly improved by Prof. Alexander Wilder, who has written an able introduc- 
tion and introduced some notes for readers on this side of the Atlantic. 

The book will be found to contain a world of information, teaching new and most 
invaluable facts and lessons, yet apart from this it would be a most profitable task to 
read it once every month if only to cultivate the author's inimitable style. 

Pew readers will receive all Max Miiller's teaching. Every intelligent reader, con- 
versant with English literature, will know this from his other writings. We exhort 
every one who may be lacking in tolerance, before reading the book, to read his 
" Dedication " to it. Nothing in the English language which we ever read breathes a 
nobler, more simple, more childlike and tolerant spirit, while at the same time it is 
maniy and fearless. Eead it by all means. 



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INDIA: 



WHAT CAN IT TEACH DS? 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
y BY 

F.^AX MiJLLEE, K.M. 



>' 



r' 



TBXT AND FOOT-NOTES COMPLETE. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY 

^. PKOF. ALEXANDER WILDER, M.D. 



JiN 30 1883' V 



NEW YORK : 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 

10 AND 12 Dey Street. 






J^OTU OF THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS. 



Tms volume contains the entire text of the English edition, also all the foot- 
notes Those portions of the Appendix which serve to illustrate the text are inserted 
in their appropriate places as foot-notes. That part of the Appendix which is of 
special interest only to the Sanscrit scholar is omitted. , ^ . ^ ^ , , 

Professor Max Mliller writes in this book not as a theologian but as a^scholar, 
not intending either to attack or defend Christian theology. His style is charming, 
because he always writes with freedom and animation. In some passages possibly 
hislanonage might be misunderstood. We have thought it best to add a tew 
notes. ° The notes of the American editor are signed " A. W. ;" ours, ' Am. I'abs. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington^ D. C. 



(// 



DEDICATED 



TO 



E. B. 00 WELL M.A., LL.D., 

PROFESSOR OP SANSKRIT ATSTD FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE IN THB 
TJNIVBRSITT OF CAMBRIDOB. 



Mt dear Cowell : As these Lectures would never 
have been written or delivered but for your hearty 
encouragement, I hope you will now allow me to dedi- 
cate them to you, not only as a token of my sincere 
admiration of your great achievements as an Oriental 
scholar, but also as a memorial of our friendship, now 
more than thirty years old, a friendship which has grown 
from year to year, has weathered many a storm, and will 
last, I trust, for what to both of us may remain of our 
short passage from shore to shore. 

I must add, however, that in dedicating these Lectures 
to you, I do not wish to throw upon you any responsi- 
bility for the views which I have put forward in them. 
I know that you do not agree with some of my views on 
the ancient religion and literature of India, and I am 
well aware that with regard to the recent date which I 
have assigned to the whole of what is commonly called 
the Classical Sanskrit Literature, I stand almost alone. 
No, if friendship can claim any voice in the courts of 
science and Hterature, let me assure you that I shall con- 
sider your outspoken criticism of my Lectures as the 
very best proof of your true and honest friendship. I 
have through life considered it the greatest honor if real 
scholars, I mean men not only of learning, but of judg- 
ment and character, have considered my writings worthy 
of a severe and searching criticism ; and I have cared far 
more for the production of one single new fact, though 



Vi DEDICATION". 

it spoke against me, than for any amount of empty 
praise or empty abuse. Sincere d votion to his studies 
and an unswerving love of truth ought to furnish the 
true scholar with an armor impermeable to flattery or 
abuse, and with a visor that shuts out no ray of light, 
from whatever quarter it may come. More light, more 
truth, more facts, more combination of facts, these are 
his quest. And if in that quest he fails, as many have 
failed before him, he knows that in the search for truth 
failures are sometimes the condition of victory, and the 
true conquerors often those whom the world calls the 
vanquished. 

You know better than anybody else the present state 
of Sanskrit scholarship. You know that at present and 
for some time to come Sanskrit scholarship means dis- 
covery and conquest. Every one of your own works 
marks a real advance, and a permanent occupation of 
new ground. But you know also how small a strip has 
as yet been explored of the vast continent of Sanskrit 
literature, and how much still remains terra incognita. 
ISTo doubt this exploring work is troublesome, and often 
disappointing, but young students must learn the truth 
of a remark lately made by a distinguished member of 
the Indian Civil Service, whose death we all deplore. 
Dr. Burnell, "that no trouble is thrown away which 
saves trouble to others." We want men who will work 
hard, even at the risk of seeing their labors unrequited ; 
we want strong and bold men who are not afraid of 
storms and shipwrecks. The worst sailors are not those 
who suffer shipwreck, but those who only dabble in pud- 
dles and are afraid of wetting their feet. 

It is easv now to criticise the labors of Sir William 

</ 

Jones, Thomas Colebrooke, and Horace Hayman Wilson, 
but what would have become of Sanskrit scholarship if 



DEDICATION". Vll 

they had not rushed in v/here even now so many fear to 
tread ? and what will become of Sanskrit scholarship if 
their conquests are forever to mark the limits of our 
knowledge ? You know best that there is more to be 
discovered in Sanskrit literature than Nalas and /Skkun- 
talas, and surely the young men who every year go out 
to India are not deficient in the spirit of enterprise, or 
even of adventure ? Why, then, should it be said that 
the race of bold explorers, who once rendered the name 
of the Indian Civil Service illustrious over the whole 
world, has well-nigh become extinct, and that England, 
which offers the strongest incentives and the most brill- 
iant opportunities for the study of the ancient language, 
literature, and history of India, is no longer in the van 
of Sanskrit scholarship ? 

If some of the young candidates for the Indian Civil 
Service who listened to my Lectures, quietly made up 
their minds that such a reproach shall be wiped out, if a 
few of them at least determined to follow in the foot- 
steps of Sir William Jones, and to show to the world 
that Englishmen who have been able to achieve by 
pluck, by perseverance, and by real political genius the 
material conquest of India, do not mean to leave the 
laurels of its intellectual conquest entirely to other coun- 
tries, then I shall indeed rejoice, and feel that I have 
paid back, in however small a degree, the large debt of 
gratitude which I owe to my adopted country and to 
some of its greatest statesmen, who have given me the 
opportunity which I could find nowhere else of realizing 
the dreams of my life — the publication of the text and 
commentary of the Eig-Veda, the most ancient book of 
Sanskrit, aye of Aryan literature, and now the edition of 
the translations of the ^' Sacred Books of the East." 

I have left my Lectures very much as I delivered 



Vlil DEDICATION". 

them at Cambridge. I am fond of tlie form of Lect- 
ures, because it seems to me the most natural form 
wbicli in our age didactic composition ought to take. 
As in ancient Greece the dialogue reflected most truly 
the intellectual life of the people, and as in the Middle 
Ages learned literature naturally assumed with the re- 
cluse in his monastic cell the form of a long monologue, 
so with us the lecture places the writer most readily in 
that position in which he is accustomed to deal with his 
fellow-men, and to communicate his knowledge to 
others. It has no doubt certain disadvantages. In a 
lecture which is meant to be didactic, we have, for the 
sake of completeness, to say and to repeat certain things 
which must be familiar to some of our readers, while we 
are also forced to leave out information which, even in 
its imperfect form, we should probably not hesitate to 
submit to our fellow-students, but which we feel we 
have not yet sufficiently mastered and matured to enable 
us to place it clearly and simply before a larger public. 

But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. A 
lecture, by keeping a critical audience constantly before 
our eyes, forces us to condense our subject, to discrimi- 
nate between what is important and what is not, and 
often to deny ourselves the pleasure of displaying what 
may have cost us the greatest labor, but is of little con- 
sequence to other scholars. In lecturing we are con- 
stantly reminded of what students are so apt to forget, 
that their knowledge is meant not for themselves only, 
but for others, and that to know well means to be able 
to teach well. I confess I can never write unless I 
think of somebody for whom I write, and I should never 
wish for a better audience to have before my mind than 
the learned, brilliant, and kind-hearted assembly by 
which I was greeted in your University. 



DEDiCATIOK. ix 

Still I miist confess that I did not succeed in bringing 
all I wished to say, and more particularly the evidence 
on which some of my statements rested, up to the higher 
level of a lecture ; and I have therefore added a number 
of notes containing the less-organized matter which re- 
sisted as yet that treatment which is necessary before our 
studies can realize their highest purpose, that of feeding, 
invigorating, and inspiriting the minds of others. 

Yours affectionately, 

F. MAX MtTLLER, 

OxFOED, December, 1882. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Dedication, iii 

INTRODUCTION, xiii 

Lecture I. What Can India Teach us ? . . 19 

" II. On the Truthful Character 

OF the Hindus, . . . .52 

^' III. The Human Interest of San- 
skrit Literature, ... 95 

*' IV. Objections, 135 

" V. The Lessons of the Veda, . . 161 

" VI. Vedic Deities, 195 

" VII. Veda and Vedanta, . . . 221 



INTRODUCTION. 



Peofessor Max Mullek has been so long and widely 
known in the world of letters as to render any formal 
introduction unnecessary. He has been from his early 
youth an assiduous student of philology, justly regarding 
it as an important key to history and an invaluable aux- 
iliary to intellectual progress. A glance at his personal 
career will show the ground upon which his reputation is 
established. 

Friedrich Maximilian Miiller, the son of Wilhehn 
Miiller, the Saxon poet, was born at Dessau, December 
6th, 1823. He matriculated at Leipzig in his eighteenth 
year, giving his principal attention to classical philology, 
and receiving his degree in 1843. He immediately be- 
gan a course of Oriental studies, chiefly Sanskrit, under 
the supervision of Professor Brockhaus, and in 1844 
engaged in his translation of the ' ' Hitopadesa. ' ' He 
removed from Leipzig to Berlin, and attended the lectures 
of Bopp, Kiicker, and Schelhng. The next year he went 
to Paris to listen to Eugene Burnouf at the College de 
France. He now began the collecting of material for 
his great quarto edition of the ^' Rig-Yeda Sanhita" and 
the '^ Commentary of Saganadranja. " He visited Eng- 
land for this purpose to examine the manuscripts in the 
Bodleian Library and at tlie Indian House. At the 
recommendation of H. H. Wilson, the Orientalist, he 
was commissioned by tlie East Lidia Company to pnblisli 



XIV Il^^TRODUCTIOl!?'. 

his edition in England at their expense. The first vol- 
ume appeared in 1849, and five others followed during 
the next few years. 

In 1850 he delivered a course of ^^ Lectures on Com- 
parative Philology" at Oxford, and the next year was 
made member of Christ Church, curator, etc., and ap- 
pointed Taylorian Professor of Modern European Lan- 
guages and Literature. He received also numerous 
other marks of distinction from universities, and was 
made one of the eight foreign members of the Institute 
of France. The Yolney prize was awarded him by the 
French Academy for his '^ Essay on the Comparative 
Philology of Indo-European Languages and its Bearing 
on the Early Civilization of Mankind." 

His writings have been numerous. Besides editing 
the translations of the '' Sacred Books of the Principal 
Religions," he has published a " Handbook for the Study 
of Sanskrit, " a ' ^ Sanskrit-EngKsh Dictionary and G-ram- 
mar," '^ Lectures upon the Science of Language," ^^ An 
Introduction to the Science of Religion," ^'Essays on 
Mythology," '' Chips from a German Workshop," etc. 
He seems to have no intermission, but penetrates where 
others would not have ventured, or have faltered from 
utter weariness. In the field of philology he has few 
peers, while in early Sanskrit learning he has virtually 
taken the part of an innovator. "While reverently fol- 
lowing after Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, Windisch- 
mann, Bopp, and others of equal distinction, he sets aside 
the received views in regard to chronology and historical 
occurrences. The era of Yikramaditya and the Golden 
Age of Sanskrit literature, bearing a date almost simul- 
taneous with the Augustan period at the West, are post- 
poned by him to a later century. It may be that he has 
overlooked some canon of interpretation that would have 



ISfTROIJUCTlOK. XY 

modified Ms results. Those, however, who hesitate to 
accept his conclusions freely acknowledge his scholarly 
enthusiasm, persistent energy, and great erudition. 

Sanskrit in his judgment constitutes an essential ele- 
ment of a liberal education. jWhile heartily admiring 
the employment of some of the best talent and noblest 
genius of our age in the study of development in the 
outward world, from the first growth of the earth and the 
beginning of organic hfe to the highest stages, he pleads 
earnestly that there is an inward and intellectual world 
also to be studied in its historical development in strict 
analogy with the other, leading up to the beginning of 
rational thought in its steady progress from the lowest to 
the highest stages. ■■ In that study of the history of the 
human mind, in that study of ourselves, our true selves, 
India occupies a place which is second to no other coun- 
try. ^ "Whatever sphere of the human mind may be 
selected for special study, whether language, religion, 
mythology, or philosophy, whether laws, customs, prim- 
itive art or primitive science, we must go to India, be- 
cause some of the most valuable and most instructive 
materials in the history of man are treasured up there, 
and there only. He inveighs most eloquently against 
the narrowing of our horizon to the history of Greeks 
and Romans, Saxons and Celts, with a dim background 
of Palestine, Egypt, and Babylon, leaving out of sight 
our nearest intellectual relatives, the Aryans of India, the 
framers of that most wonderful language the Sanskrit, 
the fellow-workers in the construction of our funda- 
mental concepts, the fathers of the most natural of natu- 
ral religions, the makers of the most transparent of 
mythologies, the inventors of the most subtle philosophy, 
and the givers of the most elaborate laws. It is the pur- 
pose of historical study to enable each generation to 



xvi IKTRODUCTIOK, 

profit from tlie experience of those wlio came before, 
and advance toward higher aims, without being obliged 
to start anew from the same point as its ancestors after 
the manner of every race of brutes. He who knows 
little of those who preceded is very likely to care little 
for those coming after. " Life wonld be to him a chain 
of sand, while it ought to be a kind of electric chain that 
makes our hearts tremble and vibrate with the most 
ancient thoughts of the Past, as well as with the most 
distant hopes of the Future. " 

In no just sense is this an exaggeration. Deep as sci- 
ence and research have explored, extensive as is the field 
which genius and art have occupied, they have an Her- 
culean labor yet to perform before India will have yield- 
ed up all her opulence of learning. The literature of 
the world in all ages has been richly furnished, if not 
actually inspired, from that fountain. The Wisdom of 
the Ancients, so much lauded in the earlier writings of 
Hebrews, Greeks, and Phoenicians, was abundantly rep- 
resented iu the lore of these Wise Men of the East. 

The first Ionian sages lighted the torch of philosophy 
at the altar of Zoroaster. The conquest of Asia Minor 
by the Persians brought Thales, Anaximenes, and Hera- 
kleitos into contact with the Eranian dogmas. The 
leaven thus imparted had a potent influence upon the 
entire mass of Grecian thought. We find it easy to 
trace its action upon opinions in later, periods and among 
the newer nations. Kant, Ilegel, Stewart, and Hamilton, 
as well as Plato, Zeno, and Aristotle, had their prototypes 
in the world and antiquity beyond. Even the first Zara- 
thustra was an exponent and not the originator of the 
Peligion and Science of Light. We are thus carried by 
this route back to the ancient Aryan Home for the 
sources from which so many golden streams have issued. 



introductio:n'. xyii 

In the Sanskrit hooks and mantras we must look for the 
treasures that make human souls rich. Perhaps we 
have been too much disposed to regard that former world 
as a wonderland, a repertory of folk-lore, or a theatre 
of gross and revolting superstition. We are now 
required by candor and justice to revise such notions. 
These primeval peoples, in their way and in a language 
akin to ours, adored the Father in heaven, and contem- 
plated the future of the soul with a sure and certain 
hope. 

I^or did they, while observing the myriads of races in- 
tervening between man and the monad, regard the world 
beyond as waste and void. Intelligences of every grade 
w^ere believed to people the region between mortals and 
the Infinite. The angels and archangels, and the spirits 
of the just made perfect — devas and pitris they called 
them — ministered about the throne of the Supreme Be- 
ing, and abode in the various spheres of universal space. 
Much of the difference between our thought and theirs 
consists in the names and not in the substance of our 
beliefs. 

We may thus be prepared to receive what India can 
teach us. In her classic dialect, the Sanskrit, we may 
read with what success the children of the men who 
journeyed from the ancient Aryan Home into the Pun- 
jab and Aryavartta have ventured '' to look inward upon 
themselves, upward to something not themselves, and to 
see whether they could not understand a little of the 
true purport of that mystery which we call life upon 
earth." It was perfectly natural, as well as perfectly 
right, that as the beholder caught a glance of the Infinite 
Beyond, the imago impressed itself upon his sensorium, 
as would be the ease from looking at the sun, and he 
would as a result perceive that Infinite in all that he 



XVlll INTRODUCTIOiq'. 

looked upon. Thus to the Sanskrit-speaking Aryan, as 
to the enhghtened mind of to-day, not to see it was utter 
blindness. What we call science, law, morality, relig- 
ion, was in his view pervaded alike throughout by this 
concept of Divine presence, or else it would have been 
less than a dream that had not come to the awaking. 
He was a follower of the light, not from the senses or the 
logical understanding, but from the eternal world. Let 
us not dwell on any darker shade of the picture. Clouds 
are dark to those who are beneath them ; but on the 
upper side, where the sun shines, they glow with golden 
splendor. Let us be wiUing to contemplate Lidia fra- 
ternally, and upon that side where the radiance of the 
Divine sheds a refulgent illumination. 

ALEXANDER WILDER. 

Newark, N. J., May 14th, 1883. 



INDIA. 

LECTURE I. 

WHAT CAlSr INDIA TEACH US ? 

When 1 received from the Board of Historical Studies 
at Cambridge the invitation to deliver a course of 
lectures, specially intended for the candidates for fhe 
Indian Civil Service, I hesitated for some time, feeling 
extremely doubtful whether in a few public discourses I 
could say anything that would be of real use to them in 
passing their examinations. To enable young men to 
pass their examinations seems now to have become the 
chief, if not the only object of the universities ; and to 
no class of students is it of greater importance to pass 
their examinations, and to pass them well, than to the 
candidates for the Indian Civil Service. 

But although I was afraid that attendance on a few 
public lectures, such as I could give, would hardly bene- 
fit a candidate who was not already fully prepared to 
pass through the fiery ordeal of the three London ex- 
aminations, I could not on the other hand shut my eyes 
completely to the fact that, after all, universities were 
not meant entirely, or even chiefly, as stepping-stones to 
an examination, but that there is something else which 
universities can teach and ought to teach — nay, which I 
feel quite sure they were originally meant to teach — 



20 LECTURE I. 

something that may not have a marketable yalne before 
a Board of Examiners, but which has a permanent value 
for the whole of our life, and that is a real interest in 
our work, and, more than that, a love of our work, and, 
more than that, a true joy and happiness in our work. 
If a university can teach that, if it can engraft that one 
small living germ in the minds of the young men who 
come here to study and to prepare themselves for the 
battle of life, and, for what is still more difficult to en- 
counter, the daily dull drudgery of life, then, I feel 
convinced, a university has done more, and conferred a 
more lasting benefit on its pupils than by helping them 
to pass the most difficult examinations, and to take the 
highest place among Senior "Wranglers or First-Class 
men. 

Unfortunatelv, that kind of work which is now 
required for passing one examination after another, that 
process of cramming and crowding which has of late 
been brought to the highest pitch of perfection, has 
often the very opposite effect, and instead of exciting an 
appetite for work, it is apt to produce an indifference, 
if not a kind of intellectual nausea, that may last for 
Hfe. 

And nowhere is this so much to be feared as in the 
case of candidates for the Indian Civil Service. After 
they have passed their first examination for admission to 
the Indian Civil Service, and given proof that they have 
received the benefits of a liberal education, and 
acquired that general information in classics, history, 
and mathematics, which is provided at our public 
schools, and forms no doubt the best and surest founda- 
tion for all more special and professional studies in later 
life, they suddenly find themselves torn away from their 
old studies and their old friends, and compelled to take 



WHAT CAN IKDIA TEACH US? 21 

up new subjects wliich to many of tliem seem strange^ 
outlandish, if not repulsive. Strange alphabets, strange 
languages, strange names, strange literatares and laws 
have to be faced, ^' tobe got up" as it is called, not from 
choice, but from dire necessity. The whole course of 
study duriug two years is determined for them, the sub- 
jects fixed, the books prescribed, the examinations regu- 
lated, and there is no time to look either right or left, if 
a candidate wishes to make sure of taking each succes- 
sive fence in good style, and without an accident. 

I know quite well that this cannot be helped. I am 
not speaking against the system of examinations in gen- 
eral, if only they are intelligently conducted ; nay, as 
an old examiner myself, I feel bound to say that the 
amount of knowledge produced ready-made at these ex- 
aminations is to my mind perfectly astounding. But 
while the answers are there on paper, strings of dates, 
lists of royal names and battles, irregular verbs, statisti- 
cal figures and whatever else you like, how seldom do we 
find that the heart of the candidates is in the work which 
they have to do. The results produced are certainly 
most ample and voluminous, but they rarely contain a 
spark of original thought, or even a clever mistake. It is 
work done from necessity, or, let us be just, from a sense 
of duty, but it is seldom, or hardly ever, a labor of love. 

'Now why should that be ? Why should a study of 
Greek or Latin — of the poetry, the philosophy, the laws 
and the art of Greece and Italy — seem congenial to us, 
why should it excite even a certain enthusiasm, and com- 
mand general respect, while a study of Sanskrit, and of 
the ancient poetry, the philosophy, the laws, and the art 
of India is looked upon, in the best case, as curious, but 
is considered by most people as useless, tedious, if not 
absurd ? 



M LECTURE t 

And, strange to say, this feeling exists in England 
more than in any other country. In France, Germany, 
and Italy, even in Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, there 
is a vagne charm connected with the name of India. 
One of the most beantiful poems in the German lan- 
guage is the Weisheit der BTohmanen^ the '' Wisdom of 
the Brahmans," by Hiickert, to my mind more rich in 
thought and more perfect in form than even Goethe's 
West-dstlicher Divan. A scholar who studies Sanskrit 
in Germany is supposed to be initiated in the deep and 
dark mysteries of ancient wisdom, and a man who has 
travelled in India, even if he has only discovered Cal- 
cutta, or Bombay, or Madras, is listened to like another 
Marco Polo. In England a student of Sanskrit is gen- 
erally considered a bore, and an old Indian civil servant, 
if he begins to describe the marvels of Elephanta or the 
Towers of Silence, runs the risk of producing a count- 
out. 

There are indeed a few Oriental scholars whose works 
are read, and who have acquired a certain celebrity in 
England, because they were really men of uncommon 
genius, and would have ranked among the great glories 
of the country, but for the misfortune that their energies 
were devoted to Indian literature — I mean Sir William 
Jones, '' one of the most enlightened of the sons of 
men," as Dr. Johnson called him, and Thomas Cole- 
brooke. But the names of others who have done good 
work in their day also, men such as Ballantyne, Buchan- 
an, Carey, Crawfurd, Davis, Elliot, Ellis, Houghton, 
Leyden, Mackenzie, Marsden, Muir, Prinsep, Rennell, 
Turnour, Upham, Wallich, Warren, Wilkins, Wilson, 
and many others, are hardly known beyond the small 
circle of Oriental scholars ; and their works are looked 
for in vain in libraries which profess to represent with a 



WHAT CAH liTDIA TEACH US ? 23 

certain completeness tlie principal branches of scholar- 
ship and science in England. 

How many times, when I advised yoimg men, candi- 
dates for the Indian Civil Service, to devote themselves 
before all things to a study of Sanskrit, have 1 been told, 
'^ What is the nse of our studying Sanskrit ? There are 
translations of /Sakuntala, Manu, and the Hitopadesa, 
and what else is there in that literature that is worth 
reading ? Kalidasa may be very pretty, and the Laws 
of Manu are Yerj curious, and the fables of the Hitopa- 
desa are very quaint ; but you would not compare San- 
skrit literature with Greek, or recommend us to waste 
our time in copying and editing Sanskrit texts which 
either teach us nothing that we do not know already, or 
teach us something which we do not care to know ?" 

This seems to me a most unhappy misconception, and 
it will be the chief object of my lectures to try to remove 
it, or at all events to modify it, as much as possible. I 
shall not attempt to prove that Sanskrit literature is as 
good as Greek literature. Why should we always com- 
pare ? A study of Greek literature has its own purpose, 
and a study of Sanskrit literature has its own purpose ; 
but what I feel convinced of, and hope to convince you 
of, is that Sanskrit literature, if studied only in a right 
spirit, is full of human interests, full of lessons which 
even Greek could never teach us, a subject worthy to 
occupy the leisure, and more than the leisure, of every 
Indian civil servant ; and certainly the best means of 
making any young man who has to spend five-and- 
twenty years of his life in India, feel at home among 
the Indians, as a fellow-worker among fellow-workers, 
and not as an alien amono^ aliens. There will be abun- 
dance of useful and most interesting work for him to do, 
if only he cares to do it, work such as he would look for 



34 LECTURE I. 

in vain, whether in Italy or in Greece, or even among 
the pyramids of Egypt or the palaces of Babylon. 

You will now understand why I have chosen as the 
title of my lectures, '^ What can India teach us ?" True, 
there are many things which India has to learn from 
us ; but there are other things, and, in one sense, very 
important things, which we too may learn from India. 
V If 1 were to look over the whole world to find out the 
country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, 
and beauty that nature can bestow — in some parts a 
very paradise on earth — I should point to India. If I 
were asked under what sky the human mind has most 
fall developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply 
pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found 
solutions of some of them which well deserve the atten- 
tion even of those who have studied Plato and Kant — I 
should point to India. And if I were to ask myself 
from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have 
been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of 
Greeks and Komans, and of one Semitic race, the Jew- 
- ish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in 
order to make our inner life more perfect, more com- 
prehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a 
life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal 
^^ fife — again I should point to India. 
^ I know you will be surprised to hear me say this. I 
know that more particularly those who have spent many 
years of active life in Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras, 
will be horror-struck at the idea that the humanity they 
meet with there, whether in the bazaars or in the courts of 
justice, or in so-called native society, should be able to 
teach us any lessons. 

Let me therefore explain at once to my friends who 
may have lived in India for years, as civil servants, or 



WHAT CAN INDIA TKACll US ? 25 

officers, or missionaries, or merchants, and who ought to 
know a great deal more of that country tlian one who 
has never set foot on tlie soil of Arjavarta, that we are 
speaking of two very different Indias. I am thinking 
chiefly of India such as it was a thousand, two thou- 
sand, it may be three thousand years ago ; they think of 
the India of to-day. And again, when thinking of the 
India of to-day, they remember chiefly the India of Cal- 
cutta, Bombay, or Madras, the India of the towns. I 
look to the India of the village communities, the true 
^ndia of the Indians. 

What I wisli to show to you, I mean more especially 
the candidates for the Indian Civil Service, is that this 
India of a thousand, or two thousand, or three thousand 
y years ago, ay the India of to-day also, if only you know 
where to look for it, is full of problems the solution of 
which concerns all of us, even us in this Europe of the 
nineteenth century. 

If you have acquired any special tastes here in England, 
you will find plenty to satisfy them in India ; and who- 
ever has learned to take an interest in any of the great 
problems that occupy the best thinkers and workers at 
home, need certainly not be afraid of India proving to 
him an intellectual exile. 

If you care for geology, there is work for you from 
the Himalayas to Ceylon. 

If you are fond of botany, there is a flora rich enough 
for many Hookers. 

If you are a zoologist, think of Haeckel, who is just 
now rushing through Indian forests and dredging in 
Indian seas, and to whom his stay in India is like the 
realization of the brightest dream of his life. 

If you are interested in ethnology, why India is like a 
living ethnological museum. 



26 LECTURE I. 

If you are fond of arcliseologj, if yoii have ever 
assisted at the opening of a barrow in England, and know 
the delight of finding a iibnla. or a knife, or a flint in a 
heap of rubbish, read only General Cunningham's *' An- 
nual Reports of the Archaeological Survey of India," 
and you will be impatient for the time when you can 
take your spade and bring to light the ancient Viharas 
or colleges built by the Buddhist monarchs of India. 

If ever you amused yourselves with collecting coins, 
why the soil of India teems with coins, Persian, Cari- 
an, Thracian, Parthian, Greek, Macedonian, Scythian, 
Roman, ^^ and Mohammedan. When Warren Hastings 
was Governor- General, an earthen pot was found on the 
bank of a river in the province of Benares, containing one 
hundred and seventy-two gold darics.f Warren Has- 
tings considered himself as making the most munificent 
present to his masters that he might ever have it in his 
power to send them, by presenting those ancient coins 
to the Court of Directors. The story is that they were 
sent to the melting-pot. At all events they had disap- 
peared when Warren Hastings returned to England. It 
rests with you to prevent the revival of such vandal- 
ism. 

In one of the last numbers of the Asiatic Journal of 
Bengal you may read of the discovery of a treasure as 
rich in gold almost as some of the tombs opened by Dr. 
Schliemann at Mykente, nay, I should add, perhaps, not 
quite unconnected with some of the treasures found at 

* Pliny (VI. 26) tells us that in his day the annual drain of bullion 
into India, in return for her valuable produce, reached the immense 
amount of "five hundred and fifty millions of sesterces." See 
E. Thomas, " The Indian Balhara," p. 13. 

t Cunningham, in the ' ' Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, " 
1881, p. 184. 



WHAT CAK IKDIA TEACH US ? ^7 

Mykense ; yet hardly any one has taken notice of it in 
England !^ 

The study of Mythology has assumed an entirely new 
character, chiefly owing to the light that has been 
thrown on it by the ancient Yedic Mythology of India. 
Bnt though the foundation of a true Science of Mythol- 
ogy has been laid, all the detail has still to be worked 
out, and could be worked out nowhere better than in 
India. . 

Even the study of fables owes its new life to India, 
from whence the various migrations of fables have been 
traced at various times and through various channels from 
East to West.f Buddhism is now known to have been 
the principal source of our legends and parables. But 
here, too, many problems still wait for their solution. 
Think, for instance, of the allusion to the fable of the 
donkey in the lion's skin, which occurs in Plato's Craty- 
lus.it ^^s ^^^^ borrowed from the East ? Or take the 



* General Cunningham describes this treasure in the " Journal of 
the Asiatic Society of Bengal" as having bee~i found on the northern 
bank of the Oxus in 1877, and containing coins from Darius down to 
Antiochus the Great, and Euthydemus, King of Baktria. This would 
seem to indicate that it had been buried there in 208 b.c, when 
Baktria was invaded by Antiochus and Euthydemus defeated. The 
coins, figures, and ornaments, many of them, were manifestly Persian, 
and doubtless had been brought into that country and kept by the 
victorious generals of Alexander, Some of the works of art unearthed 
by Dr. Schliemann at Mykense are either Persian or Assyrian in 
character, and are like those found on the Oxus. Professor Forch- 
hammer very plausibly supposes that they were spoils from the 
Persian camp which had been awarded to Mykense as her share after 
the overthrow of Mardonius.— A. W. 

t See" Selected Essays, "vol. i., p. 500, "The Migration of Fables. " 

^ Cratylus, 411 A. " Still, as I have put on the lion's skin, I must 

not be faint-hearted." Possibly, however, this may refer to Hercules, 

and not to the fable of the donkey in the lion's or the tiger's skin. 



28 LECTUEE I. 

fable of tiie weasel changed by Aphrodite into a woman 
who, when she saw a monse, could not refrain from 
making a spring at it. This, too, is very like a Sanskrit 
fable ; but how then could it have been brought into 
Greece early enough to appear in one of the comedies of 
Strattis, about 400 e.g. ?'^ Here, too, there is still plenty 
of work to do. 

We may go back even farther into antiquity, and still 
find strange coincidences between the legends of India and 
the legends of the West, without as yet being able to say 
how they travelled, whether from East to West, or from 
West to East. That at the time of Solomon there was a 
channel of communication open between India and Syria 
and Palestine is established beyond doubt, I believe, by 
certain Sanskrit words which occur in the Bible as names 
of articles of export from Ophir, articles such as ivory, 
apes, peacocks, and sandalwood, which, taken together, 
could not have been exported from any country but 
India, f Nor is there any reason to suppose that the 
commercial intercourse between India, the Persian 
Gulf, the Bed Sea and the Mediterranean was ever com- 
pletely interrupted, even at the time when the Book 
of Kings is supposed to have been written. 

In tlie Hitopadesa, a donkey, being nearly starved, is gent by bis 
master into a corn-field to feed. In order to shield bim be puts a 
tiger's skin on bim. All goes well till a watcbman approaches, bid- 
ing bimself under bis gray coat, and trying to sboot tbe tiger. Tbe 
donkey tbinks it is a gray female donkey, begins to bray, and is 
killed. On a similar fable in ^sop, see Benfey, " Pantscbatantra," 
vol. i., p. 463 ; M. M., " Selected Essays, " vol. i., p. 513. 

/* See "Fragmenta Comic" (Didot), p. 302 ; Benfe3% 1. c. vol. i., 
pf^74. 

t " Lectures on tbe Science of Language," vol. i., p. 231. 
Tbe names employed in tbe Hebrew text of tbe Bible are said 
to be Tamil.— A. W. 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ? 29 

Now you remember the judgment of Solomon, which 
has always been admired as a proof of great legal wis- 
dom among the Jews."^ I must confess that, not having 
a legal mind, I never could suppress a certain shudder f 
when reading the decision of Solomon : '' Divide the 
living child in two, and give half to the one, and half 
to the other. ' ' 

Let me now tell you the same story as it is told by the 
Buddhists, whose sacred Canon is full of such legends 
and parables. In the Kanjur, which is the Tibetan 
translation of the Buddhist Tripiz^aka, we likewise read 
of two women who claimed each to be the mother of the 
same child. The king, after listening to their quarrels 
for a long time, gave it up as hopeless to settle who was 
the real mother. Upon this Yi^^akha stepped forward 
and said : '' What is the use of examining and cross- 
examining these women ? Let them take the boy and 
settle it among themselves. ' ' Thereupon both women 
fell on the child, and when the fight became violent the 
child was hurt and began to cry. Then one of them 
let him go, because she could not bear to hear the child 
cry. 

That settled the question. The king gave the child 
to the true mother, and had the other beaten with a rod. 

This seems to me, if not the more primitive, yet the 
more natural form of the story — showing a deeper knowl- 

* 1 Kings 3 : 25. 

f The Bible story is dramatic ; the other is not. The '< shudder " 
is a tribute to the dramatic power of the Bible narrative. The child 
was in no danger of being cut in twain. In the Buddhist version the 
child is injured. Why does not Prof. Miiller shudder when the child 
is hurt and cries ? The Solomonic child is not hurt and does not 
cry. Is not the Bible story the more humane, the more dignified, the 
more dramatic ? And no canon of criticism requires us to believe 
that a poor version of a story is the more primitive. —Am. Pubs, 



30 LEOTUKE I. 

edge of human nature and more wisdom than even the 
wisdom of Solomon.* 

Many of you may have studied not only languages, but 
also the Science of Language, and is there any country 
in which some of the most important problems of that 
science, say only the growth and decay of dialects, or the 
possible mixture of languages, with regard not only to 
words, but to grammatical elements also, can be studied 
to greater advantage than among the Aryan, the Dravid- 
ian, andtheMuT^da inhabitants of India, when brought in 
contact with their various invaders and conquerors, the 
Greeks, the Yue-tchi, the Arabs, the Persians, the 
Moguls, and lastly the English ? 

Again, if you are a student of Jurisprudence, there is 
a history of law to be explored in India, very different 
from what is known of the history of law in Greece, in 
Rome, and in Germany, yet both by its contrasts and by 
its similarities full of suggestions to the student of 
Comparative Jurisprudence. l^ew materials are being 
discovered every year, as, for instance, the so-called 
Dharma or Samaya^arika Sutras, which have supplied 
the materials for the later metrical law-books, such as 
the famous Laws of Manu. What was once called 
'^ The Code of Laws of Manu," and confidently referred 
to 1200, or at least 500 e.g., is now hesitatingly referred 
to perhaps the fourth century a.d., and called neither a 
Code, nor a Code of Laws, least of all, the Code of Laws 
of Manu. 

If you have learned to appreciate the value of recent 

* See some excellent remarks on this subject in Khys Davids, 
"Buddhist Birth-Stories," vol. i., pp. xiii. and xliv. The learned 
scholar gives another version of the story from a Singhalese trans- 
lation of the (rataka, dating from the fourteenth century, and he ex- 
presses a hope that Dr. Fausboll will soon publish the Pali original. 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ? 31 

researches into the antecedents of all law, namely the 
foundation and growth of the snnplest political com- 
munities — and nowhere could you have had better op- 
portunities for it than here at Cambridge — you will find 
a field of observation opened before you in the still-ex- 
isting village estates in India that will amply repay 
careful research. 

And take that which, after all, whether we confess or 
deny it, we care for more in this life than for anything 
else — nay, which is often far more cared for by those 
who deny than by those who confess — take that which 
supports, pervades, and directs all our acts and thoughts 
and hopes — without which there can be neither village- 
community nor empire, neither custom nor law, neither 
right nor wrong — take that which, next to language, 
has most firmly fixed the specific and permanent barrier 
between man and beast — which alone has made life pos- 
sible and bearable, and which, as it is the deepest, 
though often-hidden spring of individual life, is also the 
foundation of all national life — the history of all histories, 
and yet the mystery of all mysteries — take religion, and 
where can you study its true origin,* its natural growth, 
and its inevitable decay better than in India, the home 
of Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, and the 
refuge of Zoroastrianism, even now the mother of new 
superstitions — and why not, in the future, the regener- 
ate child of the purest faith, if only purified from the 
dust of nineteen centuries ? 

You will find yourselves everywhere in India between 
an immense past and an immense future, with opportu- 
nities such as the old world could but seldom, if ever, 

* This is true of what theologians call natural religion, which is 
assumed to be a growth out of human consciousness ; but the 
Christian religion is not a natural religion. — Am. Pubs. 



32 LECTURE I. 

offer you. Take any of the burning questions of the 
day — popular education, higher education, parhamentary 
representation, codification of laws, finance, emigration, 
poor-law ; and whether you have anything to teach and 
to try, or anything to observe and to learn, India will 
supply you with a laboratory such as exists nowhere else. 
That very Sanskrit, the study of which may at first 
seem so tedious to you and so useless, if only you will 
carry it on, as you may carry it on here at Cambridge 
better than anywhere else, will open before you large 
layers of literature, as yet almost unknown and unex- 
plored, and allow you an insight into strata of thought 
deeper than any you have known before, and rich in 
lessons that appeal to the deepest sympathies of the 
human heart. 

Depend upon it, if only you can make leisure, you will 
find plenty of work in India for your leisure hours. 

India is not, as you may imagine, a distant, strange, 
or, at the very utmost, a cm'ious country. India for the 
future belongs to Europe, it has its place in the Indo- 
European world, it has its place in our own history, and 
in what is the very life of history, the history of the 
human mind. 

You know how some of the best talent and the 
noblest genius of our age has been devoted to the study 
of the development of the outward or material world, 
the growth of the earth, the first appearance of living 
cells, their combination and differentiation, leading up to 
the beginning of organic life, and its steady progress 
from the lowest to the highest stages. Is there not an 
inward and intellectual world also which has to be stud- 
ied in its historical development, from the first appear- 
ance of predicative and demonstrative roots, their com- 
bination and differentiation, leading up to the beginning 



WHAT CAI^ lKt)IA TEACH US ? 33 

of rational thought in its steady progress from the lowest 
to the highest stages ? And in that study of the history 
of the human mind, in that study of ourselves, of our 
true selves, India occupies a place second to no other 
country. "Whatever sphere of the human mind you may 
select for your special study, v/hether it be language, or 
religion, or mythology, or philosophy, whether it be laws 
or customs, primitive art or primitive science, every- 
where, you have to go to India, whether you hke it or 
not, because some of the most valuable and most in- 
structive materials in the history of man are treasured up 
in India, and in India only. 

And while thus trying to explain to those whose lot 
will soon be cast in India the true position which that 
wonderful country holds or ought to hold in universal 
history, I may perhaps be able at the same time to ap- 
peal to the sympathies of other members of this Univer- 
sity, by showing them how imperfect our knowledge of 
universal history, our insight into the development of 
the human intellect, must always remain, if we narrow 
our horizon to the history of Greeks and Romans, Sax- 
ons and Celts, with a dim background of Palestine, 
Egypt, and Babylon,"^' and leave out of sight our nearest 
intellectual relatives, the Aryans of India, the framers of 
the most wonderful language, the Sanskrit, the fellow- 
workers in the construction of our fundamental concepts, 
the fathers of the most natural of natural religions, the 
makers of the most transparent of mythologies, the in- 
ventors of the most subtle philosophy, and the givers of 
the most elaborate laws. 

* There are traces of Aryan occupation at Babylon, Rawlinson 
assures us, about twenty centuries b.c. This vrould suggest a possible 
interchange of religious ideas between the earlier Aryan and Akkado- 
Chaldean peoples. — A. W. 



34 LECTURE I. 

Tliere are many things which we think essential in a 
h'beral education, whole chapters of history which we 
teach in our schools and universities, that cannot for one 
moment compare with the chapter relating to India, if 
only properly understood and freely interpreted. 

In our time, when the study of history threatens to 
become almost an impossibility — such is the mass of de- 
tails which historians collect in archives and pour out 
before us in monographs — it seems to me more than ever 
the duty of the true historian to find ont the real propor- 
tion of things, to arrange his materials according to the 
strictest rules of artistic perspective, and to keep com- 
pletely out of sight all that may be rightly ignored by us 
in our own passage across the historical stage of the world. 
It is this power of discovering what is really important 
tliat distinguishes the true historian from the mere 
chronicler, in whose eyes everything is important, par- 
ticularly if he has discovered it himself. I think it was 
Frederick the Great who, when sighing for a true his- 
torian of his reign, complained bitterly that those who 
wrote the history of Prussia never forgot to describe the 
buttons on his uniform. And it is probably of such his- 
torical works that Carlyle was thinking when he said that 
he had waded through them all, but that nothing should 
ever induce him to hand even their names and titles 
down to posterity. And yet how much is there even in 
Carlyle' s histories that might safely be consigned to ob- 
livion ! 

Why do we want to know history ? Why does history 
form a recognized part of our liberal education ? Sim- 
ply because all of us, and every one of us, ought to 
know how we have come to be what we are, so that each 
generation need not start again from the same point and 
toil over the same ground, but, profiting by the experi- 



WHAT CAN IN'DIA TEACH US ? 35 

ence of those who came before, may advance toward 
higher points and nobler aims. As a child when grow- 
ing up might ask his father or grandfather v^ho had 
built the house they lived in, or who had cleared the 
field that yielded them their food, we ask the historian 
whence we came, and how we came into possession of 
what we call onr own. History may tell ns afterward 
many. useful and amusing things, gossip, such as a child 
might like to hear from his mother or grandmother ; but 
what history has to teach us before all and everything, is 
our own antecedents, our own ancestors, our own de- 
scent. 

Now our principal intellectual ancestors are, no doubt, 
the Jews^ the Greeks^ the Romans, and the Saxons, and 
we, here in Europe, should not call a man educated or 
enlightened who was ignorant of the debt which he owes 
to his intellectual ancestors in Palestine, Greece, Kome, 
and Germany. The whole past history of the world 
would be darkness to him, and not knowing what those 
who came before him had done for him, he would prob- 
ably care little to do anything for those who are to come 
after him. Life would be to him a chain of sand, while 
it ought to be a kind of electric chain that makes our 
hearts tremble and vibrate with the most ancient thoughts 
of the past, as well as with the most distant hopes of the 
future. 

Let us begin with our religion. No one can under- 
stand even the historical possibility of the Christian 
rehgion without knowing something of the Jewish race, 
which must be studied chiefly in the pages of the Old 
Testament. And in order to appreciate the true rela- 
tion of the Jews to the rest of the ancient world, and to 
understand what ideas were peculiarly their own, and 
what ideas they shared in common with the other mem- 



86 LECTURE I. 

bers of the Semitic stock, or wliat moral and religious 
impulses they received from their historical contact with 
other nations of antiquity, it is absolutely necessary that 
we should pay some attention to the history of Babylon, 
Nineveh, Phoenicia, and Persia. These may seem dis- 
tant countries and forgotten people, and many might feel 
inclined to say, ' ' Let the dead bury their dead ; what 
are those mummies to us ?" Still, such is the marvel- 
lous continuity of history, that I could easily show you 
many things which we, even we who are here assembled, 
owe to Babylon, to Nineveh, to Egypt, Phoenicia, and 
Persia. 

Every one who carries a watch owes to the Baby- 
lonians the division of the hour into sixty minutes. It 
may be a very bad division, yet such as it is, it has come 
to us from the Greeks and Romans, and it came to them 
from Babylon. The sexagesimal division is peculiarly 
Babylonian. Hipparchos, 150 e.g., adopted it from 
Babylon, Ptolemy, 150 a.d., gave it wider currency, and 
the French, when they decimated everything else, 
respected the dial-plates of our watches, and left them 
with their sixty Babylonian minutes. 

Every one who writes a letter owes his alphabet to the 
Romans and Greeks ; the Greeks owed their alphabet to 
the Phoenicians, and the Phoenicians learned it in Egypt. 
It may be a very imperfect alphabet — as all the students 
of phonetics will tell you — yet, such as it is and has 
been, we owe it to the old Phoenicians and Egyptians, 
and in every letter we trace, there lies imbedded the 
mummy of an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic. 

What do we owe to the Persians ? It does not seem 
to be much, for they were not a very inventive race, and 
what they knew they had chiefly learned from their 
neighbors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. Still, we 



WHAT CAK IN^DIA TEACH US ? 37 

owe them something. First of all, we owe them a large 
debt of gratitude for having allowed themselves to be 
beaten by the Greeks ; for think what the world would 
have been if the Persians had beaten the Greeks at 
Marathon, and had enslaved — that means, annihilated — 
the genius of ancient Greece. However, this may be 
called rather an involuntary contribution to the progress 
of humanity, and I mention it only in order to show how 
narrowly, not only Greeks and Romans, but Saxons and 
Anglo-Saxons too, escaped becoming Parsis or Fire-wor- 
shippers. 

But I can mention at least one voluntary gift which 
came to us from Persia, and that is the relation of silver 
to gold in our bi-metallic currency. That relation was, 
no doubt, first determined in Babylonia, but it assumed 
its practical and historical importance in the Persian em- 
pire, and spread from there to the Greek colonies in 
Asia, and thence to Europe, where it has maintained 
itself with slight variation to the present day. 

A talent * was divided into sixty 7nin(je, a mina into 
sixty shekels. Here we have again the Babylonian sex- 
agesimal system, a system which owes its origin and pop- 
ularity, I believe, to the fact that sixty has the greatest 
number of divisors. Shekel was translated into Greek 
by Stater^ and an Athenian gold stater, like the Persian 
gold stater, down to the times of Crcesus, Darius, and 
Alexander, was the sixtieth part of a mina of gold, not 
very far therefore from our sovereign. The proportion 
of silver to gold was fixed as thirteen or thirteen and a 
third to one ; and if the weight of a silver shekel was 
made as thirteen to ten, such a coin would correspond 

* See Cunningham, "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal," 
1881. pp. 162-168. 



38 LECTUEE I. 

very nearly to onr florin.'^ Half a silver shekel was a 
drachma, and this was therefore the true ancestor of our 
shilKng. 

Again you may say that any attempt at fixing the rela- 
tive value of silver and gold is, and always has been, a 
great mistake. Still it shows how closely the world is 
held together, and how, for good or for evil, we are 
what we are, not so much by ourselves as by the toil and 
moil of those who came before us, our true intellectual 
ancestors, whatever the blood may have been composed 
of that ran through their veins, or the bones which 
formed the rafters of their skulls. 

And if it is true, with regard to religion, that no one 
could understand it and appreciate its full purport with- 
out knowing its origin and growth, that is, without 
knowing something of what the cuneiform inscriptions 
of Mesopotamia, the hieroglyphic and hieratic texts of 
Egypt, and the historical monuments of Phoenicia and 
Persia can alone reveal to us, it is equally true with re- 
gard to all the other elements that constitute the whole 
of our intellectual life. If we are Jewish or Semitic in 
our religion, we are Greek in our philosophy, Bomaii in 
our politics, and Saxon in our morality ; and it follows 
that a knowledge of the history of the G-reeks, Romans, 
and Saxons, or of the flow of civilization from Greece to 
Italy, and through Germany to these isles, forms an 
essential element in what is called a liberal, that is, an 
historical and rational education. 

But then it might be said. Let this be enough. Let 
us know by all means all that deserves to be known 
about our real spiritual ancestors in the great historical 
kingdoms of the world ; let us be grateful for all we 

* iiim, the Persian word for silver, has also the meaning of one 
thirteenth ; see Cunningham, 1. c. p. 165. 



WHAT CAK INDIA TEACH US ? 39 

have inherited from Egyptians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, 
Jews, Greeks, Komans, and Saxons. But why bring in 
India ? Why add a new burden to what every man has 
to bear already, before he can call himself fairly edu- 
cated ? What have we inherited from the dark dwellers 
on the Indus and the Ganges, that we should have to 
add their royal names and dates and deeds to the archives 
of our already overburdened memory ? 

There is some justice in this complaint. The ancient 
inhabitants of India are not our intellectual ancestors in 
the same direct way as Jews, Greeks, Romans, and Sax- 
ons are ; but they represent, nevertheless, a collateral 
branch of that family to which we belong by language, 
that is, by thought, and their historical records extend in 
some respects so far beyond all other records and have 
been preserved to ns in such perfect and such legible 
documents, that we can learn from them lessons which 
we can learn nowhere else, and supply missing hnks in 
onr intellectual ancestry far more important than that 
missing link (which we can well afford to miss), the link 
between Ape and Man. 

I am not speaking as yet of the literature of India as it 
is, but of something far more ancient, the language of 
India, or Sanskrit. No one supposes any longer that 
Sanskrit was the common source of Greek, Latin, and 
Anglo-Saxon. This used to be said, but it has long been 
shown that Sanskrit is only a collateral branch of the 
same stem from which spring Greek, Latin, and Anglo- 
Saxon ; and not only these, but all the Teutonic, all the 
Celtic, all the Slavonic languages, nay, the languages of 
Persia and Armenia also. 

What, then, is it that gives to Sanskrit its claim on 
onr attention, and its supreme importance in the eyes of 
the historian ? 



40 LECTURE 1. 

First of all, its antiquity — for we know Sanskrit at an 
earlier period tlian Greek. But what is far more impor- 
tant than its merely chronological antiquity is the antique 
state of preservation in which that Aryan language has 
been handed down to us. The world had known Latin 
and Greek for centuries, and it was felt, no doubt, that 
there was some kind of similarity between the two. But 
how was that similarity to be explained ? Sometimes 
Latin was supposed to give the key to the formation of a 
Greek word, sometimes Greek seemed to betray the 
secret of the origin of a Latin word. Afterward, when 
the ancient Teutonic languages, such as Gothic and 
Anglo-Saxon, and the ancient Celtic and Slavonic lan- 
guages too, came to be studied, no one could help seeing 
a certain family hkeness among them all. But how such 
a likeness between these languages came to be, and how, 
wha]^ is far more difficult to explain, such striking differ- 
ences too between these languages came to be, remained 
a mystery, and gave rise to the most gratuitous theories, . 
most of them, as you know, devoid of all scientific foun- 
dation. As soon, however, as Sanskrit stepped into the 
midst of these languages, there came light and warmth 
and mutual recognition. They all ceased to be stran- 
gers, and each fell of its own accord into its right place. 
Sanskrit was the eldest sister of them all, and could tell 
of many things which the other members of the family 
had quite forgotten. Still, the other languages too had 
each their own tale to tell ; and it is out of all their tales 
together that a chapter in the human mind has been put 
together which, in some respects, is more important to 
us than any of the other chapters, the Jewish, the 
Greek, the Latin, or the Saxon. 

The process by which that ancient chapter of history 
was recovered is very simple. Take the words which 



WHAT CAN" Il^DIA TEACH US ? 41 

occur in tlie same form pjicI with tlie same meaning in all 
the seven branches of the Aryan family, and you have in 
them the most genuine and trustworthy records in which 
to read the thoughts of our true ancestors, before they 
had become Hindus, or Persians, or Greeks, or E-omans, 
or Celts, or Teutons, or Slaves. Of course, some of these 
ancient charters may have been lost in one or other of 
these seven branches of the Aryan family, but even 
then, if they are found in six, or live, or four, or three, 
or even two only of its original branches, the probabihty 
remains, unless we can prove a later historical contact 
between these languages, that these words existed before 
the great Arycm Sejparation. If we find agni^ meaning 
fire, in Sanski'it, and ignis, meaning fire, in Latin, we 
may safely conclude that fire v/as known to the undivid- 
ed Aryans, even if no trace of the same name of fire oc- 
curred anywhere else. And why ? Because there is no 
indication that Latin remained longer united with San- 
skrit than any of the other Aryan languages, or that 
Latin could have borrowed such a word from Sanskrit, 
after these two languages had once become distinct. We 
have, however, the Lithuanian ugnis, and the Scottish 
ingle, to show that the Slavonic and possibly the Teu- 
tonic languages also, knew the same word for fire, 
though they replaced it in time by other words. Words, 
like all other things, will die, and why they should live 
on in one soil and wither away and j^erish in another, is 
not always easy to say. What has become of ignis, for 
instance, in all the Romance languages ? It has with- 
ered away and perished, probably because, after losing- 
its final unaccentuated syllable, it became awkward to 
pronounce ; and another word, focus, which in Latin 
meant fireplace, hearth, altar, has taken its place. 

Suppose we wanted to know whether the ancient 



42 LECTURE I. 

Aryans before their separation knew the mouse : we 
slionld only have to consult the principal Aryan diction- 
aries, and we should find in Sanskrit Tnush, in Greek 
livq^ in Latin 7nus, in Old Slavonic 7ni/se, in Old High 
German 7nus, enabling us to say that, at a time so dis- 
tant from us that we feel inclined to measure it by Ind- 
ian rather than by our own chronology, the mouse was 
known, that is, was named, was conceived and recog- 
nized as a species of its own, not to be confounded with 
any other vermin. 

And if we were to ask whether the enemy of the 
mouse, the cat, was known at the same distant time, we 
should feel justified in saying decidedly, JS^o. The cat 
is called in Sanskrit mar^ara and vi<^ala. In Greek and 
Latin the words usually given as names of the cat, yaXsTj 
and aiXovpog, inustella and feles, did not originally sig- 
nifv the tame cat, but the weasel or marten. The name 
for the real cat in Greek was Kdrra, in Latin catus, and 
these words have supplied the names for cat in all the 
Teutonic, Slavonic, and Celtic languages. The animal 
itself, so far as we know at present, came to Europe 
from Egypt, where it had been worshipped for centuries 
and tamed ; and as this arrival probably dates from the 
fourth century a.d., we can well understand that no 
common name for it could have existed when the Aryan 
nations separated.^ 

* The common domestic cat is first mentioned by Csssarius, the 
j)hysician, brother of Gregory of Nazianus, about the middle of the 
fourth century. It came from Egypt, where it was regarded as sacred. 
Herodotus denominates it afXavpoq, which was also the designation of 
the weasel and marten, Kallimachus employs the same title, which 
his commentator explains as mTTog. In later times this name of un- 
certain etymology has superseded every other. The earlier Sanskrit 
writers appear to have had no knowledge of the animal ; but the 
mar^ara is named by Manu, and the vidala by Panini. — A. W, 



WHAT CAl^ IKDIA TEACH US ? 43 

In this way a more or less complete picture of the 
state of civilization, previous to the Aryan Separation, 
can be and has been reconstructed, like a mosaic put to- 
gether with the fragments of ancient stones ; and 1 
doubt whether, in tracing the history of the human 
mind, we shall ever reach to a lower stratum than that 
which is revealed to us by the converging rays of the 
different Aryan languages. 

Nor is that all ; for even that Proto-Aryan language, 
as it has been reconstructed from the ruins scattered 
about in India, Greece, Italy, and Germany, is clearly 
the result of a long, long process of thought. One 
shrinks from chronological hmitations when looking into 
such distant periods of life. But if we find Sanskrit as 
a perfect literary language, totally different from Greek 
and Latin, 1500 b.c, where can those streams of San- 
skrit, Greek, and Latin meet, as we trace them back to 
their common source ? And then, when we have fol- 
lowed these mighty national streams back to their com- 
mon meeting-point, even then that common language 
looks like a rock washed down and smoothed for ages by 
the ebb and flow of thought. We find in that language 
such a compound, for instance, as asmi^ I am, Greek 
eaiiL. What would other languages give for such a pure 
concept as / mn f They may say, / standi or I live, or 
I grow, or I turn , but it is given to few languages only 
to be able to say I mn. To us nothing seems more nat- 
ural than the auxiliary verb / am / but, in reahty, no 
work of art has required greater efforts than this little 
word / am. And all those efforts lie beneath the level 
of the common Proto-Aryan speech. Many different 
ways were open, were tried, too, in order to arrive at 
such a compound as asnii, and such a concept as / a?7i. 
But all wei'e given up, and this one alone remained, and 



44 LECTURE I. 

was preserved forever in all the languages and all the 
dialects of the Aryan family. In as-rni, as is the root, 
and in the compound as-mi, the predicative root as^ to 
be, is predicated of mi, I. But no language could ever 
]3roduce at once so empty, or, if you like, so general a 
root as as, to be. As meant originally to hreathe, and 
from it we have asu, breath, spirit, Hfe, also as the 
mouth, Latin 6s, oris. By constant wear and tear this 
root as, to breathe, had first to lose all signs of its origi- 
nal material character, before it could convey that purely 
a])stract meaning of existence, without any qualification, 
which has rendered to the higher operations of thought 
the same service which the nought, likewise the inven- 
tion of Indian genius, has to render in arithmetic. Who 
will say how long the friction lasted which changed as, 
to breathe, into as, to be ? And even a root as, to 
breathe, was an Aryan root, not Semitic, not Turanian. 
It possessed an historical individuality — it was the work 
of our forefathers, and represents a thread which unites 
us ill our thoughts and words with those who first 
thought for us, with those who first spoke for us, and 
whose thoughts and words men are still thinking and 
speaking, though divided from them by thousands, it 
may be by hundreds of thousands of years. 

This is what I call history in the true sense of the 
word, something really worth knowing, far more so than 
the scandals of courts, or the butcheries of nations, which 
fill so many pages of our Manuals of History. And all 
this work is only beginning, and whoever likes to labor 
in these the most ancient of historical archives will find 
plenty of discoveries to make — and yet people ask. What 
is the use of learning Sanskrit ? 

We get accustomed to everything, and cease to won- 
der at what would have startled our fathers and upset all 



WitAT OAK INDIA TEACH US ? 46 

their stratified notions, like a sudden earthquake. Every 
child now learns at school that English is an Aryan or 
Indo-European language, that it belongs to the Teutonic 
branch, and that this branch, together with the Italic, 
Greek, Celtic, Slavonic, Iranic, and Indie branches, all 
spring from the same stock, and form together the great 
Aryan or Indo-European family of speech. 

But this, though it is taught now in our elementary 
schools, was really, but fifty years ago, hke the opening 
of a new horizon of the world of the intellect, and the 
extension of a feeling of closest fraternity that made us 
feel at home where before we had been strangers, and 
changed millions of so-called barbarians into our own 
kith and kin. To speak the same language constitutes a 
closer union than to have drunk the same milk ; and 
Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, is substantially 
the same language as Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon. 
This is a lesson which we should never have learned but 
from a study of Indian language and literature, and if 
India had taught us nothing else, it would have taught 
us more than almost any other language ever did. 

It is quite amusing, though instructive also, to read 
what was written by scholars and philosophers when this 
new light first dawned on the world. They would not 
have it, they would not believe that there could be any 
community of origin between the people of Athens and 
Rome, and tlie so-called Niggers of India. The classi- 
cal scholar scouted the idea, and I myself still remember 
the time, when I was a student at Leipzig, and began to 
study Sanskrit, with what contempt any remarks on 
Sanskrit or comparative grammar were treated by my 
teachers, men such as Gottfried Hermann, Ilaupt, Wes- 
termann, Stallbaum, and others. No one ever was for a 
time so completely laughed down as Professor Bopp, 



46 LECTURE 1. 

when lie first published his Comparative Grammar of 
Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. All hands 
were against him ; and if in comparing Greek and Latin 
with Sanskrit, Gothic, Celtic, Slavonic, or Persian, he 
happened to have placed one single accent wrong, the 
shouts of those who knew nothing but Greek and Latin, 
and probably looked in their Greek dictionaries to be 
quite sure of their accents, would never end. Dugald 
Stewart, rather than admit a relationship between Hindus 
and Scots, would rather believe that the whole Sanskrit 
language and the wdiole of Sanskrit hterature — mind, a 
literature extending over three thousand years and larger 
than the ancient literature of either Greece or Home — 
was a forgery of those wily priests, the Brahmans. I 
remember too how, when I was at school at Leipzig (and 
a very good school it was, with such masters as Nobbe, 
Forbiger, Funkhaenel, and Palm — an old school too, 
which could boast of Leibnitz among its former pupils) I 
remember, 1 say, one of our masters (Dr. Klee) telling us 
one afternoon, when it was too hot to do any serious 
work, that there was a language spoken in India, which 
was much the same as Greek and Latin, nay, as German 
and Russian. At first we thought it was a joke, but 
when one saw the parallel columns of numerals, pro- 
nouns, and verbs in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin written 
on the blackboard, one felt in the presence of facts, be- 
fore which one had to bow. All one's ideas of Adam 
and Eve, and the Paradise, and the tower of Babel, and 
Shem, Ham, and Japhet, with Homer and ^neas and 
Yirgil too, seemed to be whirling round and round, till 
at last one picked up the fragments and tried to build 
up a new world, and to live with a new historical con- 
sciousness. 

Here you will see why I consider a certain knowledge 



WHAT CA]sr IKDIA TEACH US ? 47 

of India an essential j^ortion of a liberal or an historical 
education. The concept of the European man has been 
changed and widely extended by our acquaintance with 
India, and we know now that we are something different 
from what we thought we were. Suppose the Ameri- 
cans, owing to some cataclysmal events, had forgotten 
their English origin, and after two or three thousand 
years found themselves in possession of a language and 
of ideas which they could trace back historically to a cer- 
tain date, but which, at that date, seemed, as it were, 
fallen frorn the sky, without any explanation of their 
origin and previous growth, what would they say if sud- 
denly the existence of an English language and literature 
were revealed to them, such as they existed in the eigh- 
teenth century — explaining all that seemed before almost 
miraculous, and solving almost every question that could 
be asked ? Well, this is much the same as what the dis- 
covery of Sanskrit has done for us. It has added a ne^\' 
period to our historical consciousness, and revived the 
recollections of our childhood, which seemed to have 
vanished forever. 

Whatever else we may have been, it is quite clear now 
that, many thousands of years ago, we were something 
that had not yet developed into an Englishman, or a 
Saxon, or a Greek, or a Hindu either, yet contained in 
itself the germs of all these characters. A strange be- 
ing, you may say. Yes, but for all that '"<. very real 
being, and an ancestor too of whom we must leiv^n to be 
proud, far more than of any such modern ancesu, o, as 
Normans, Saxons, Celts, and all the rest. 

And this is not all yet that a study of Sanskrit and the 
other Aryan languages has done for us. It has not only 
widened our views of man, and taught us to embrace 
millions of strangers and barbarians as members of one 



48 LECTURE I. 

family, but it lias imparted to the whole ancient history 
of man a reality which it never possessed before. 

We speak and write a great deal about antiquities, and 
if we can lay hold of a Greek statue or an Egyptian 
Sphinx or a Babylonian Bull, our heart rejoices, and w^e 
build museums grander than any royal palaces to receive 
the treasures of the past. This is quite right. But are 
you aware that every one of us possesses what may be 
called the richest and most wonderful Museum of An- 
tiquities, older than any statues, sphinxes, or bulls ? 
And where ? Why, in our own language. When I use 
such words as father or raother^ heart or tear^ one^ iwo^ 
three, here and there, I am handling coins or counters 
that were current before there was one single Greek 
statue, one single Babylonian Bull, one single Egyptian 
Sphinx. Yes, each of us carries about with him the 
richest and most wonderful Museum of Antiquities ; and 
if he only knows how to treat those treasures, how to 
rub and polish them till they become translucent again, 
how to arrange them and read them, they will tell him 
marvels more marvellous than all hieroglyphics and 
cuneiform inscriptions put together. The stoi'ies they 
have told us are beginning to be old stories now. Many 
of you have heard them before. But do not let them 
cease to be marvels, like so many things w^iich cease to 
be marvels because they happen every day. And do not 
think that there is nothing left for you to do. There 
are more marvels still to be discovered in language than 
v^'y ; ever been revealed to us ; nay, there is no word, 
liOwever common, if only you know how to take it to 
pieces, like a cunningly contrived work of art, fitted to- 
gether thousands of years ago by the most cunning of 
artists, the human mind, that will not make you listen and 
marvel more than any chapter of the Arabian Nights. 



WHAT CAIT INDIA TEACH US ? 49 

But I must not allow myself to be carried away from 
my proper subject. All I wisli to impress on you by way 
of introduction is that the results of the Science of Lan- 
guage, which, without the aid of Sanskrit, would never 
have been obtained, form an essential element of what 
we call a liberal, that is an historical education — an edu- 
cation which will enable a man to do what the French 
call s^orienter^ that is, '^to find his East," "his true 
East," and thus to determine his real place in the world ; 
to know, in fact, the port whence man started, the course 
he has followed, and the port toward which he has to 
steer. 

We all come from the East — all that we value most 
has come to us from the East, and in going to the East, 
not only those who have received a special Oriental 
training, but everybody who has enjoyed the advantages 
of a liberal, that is, of a truly historical educa^tion, ought 
to feel that he is going to his " old home," full of mem- 
ories, if only he can read them. Instead of feeling your 
hearts sink within you, when next year you approach the 
shores of India, I wish that every one of you could feel 
what Sir William Jones felt, when, just one hundred 
years ago, he came to the end of his long voyage from 
England, and saw the shores of India rising on the hori- 
zon. At that time, young men going to the wonderland 
of India were not ashamed of dreaming dreams and 
seeing visions ; and this was the dream dreamed and the 
vision seen by Sir William Jones, then simple Mr. 
Jones : 

' ' When I was at sea last August (that is in August, 
1Y83), on my last voyage to this country (India) I L^d 
long and ardently desired to visit, I found one eveni.^g, 
on inspecting the observations of the day, that India jay 
before us, Persia on our left, while a breeze from Ara^ 



50 LECTURE 1. 

hia blew nearly on our stern. A situation so pleasing in 
itself and to me so new, could not fail to awaken a train 
of reflections in a mind wliich liad early been accus- 
tomed to contemplate with, delight the ev^entful histories 
and agreeable fictions of this Eastern world. It gave 
me inexpressible pleasure to find myself in the midst of 
so noble an amphitheatre, almost encircled by the vast 
regions of Asia, which has ever been esteemed the nurse 
of sciences, the inventress of delightful and useful arts, 
the scene of glorious actions, fertile in the productions of 
human genius, and infinitely diversified in the forms of 
religion and government, in the laws, manners, customs, 
and languages, as well as in the features and complexions 
of men. I could not help remarking how important and 
extensive a field was yet unexplored, and how many 
solid advantages unimproved." 

India wants more such dreamers as that young Mr. 
Jones, standing alone on the deck of his vessel and 
watching the sun diving into the sea — with the memories 
of England behind and the hopes of India before him, 
feeling the presence of Persia and its ancient monarchs, 
and breathing the breezes of Arabia and its glowing 
poetry. Such di-eamers know how to make their dreams 
come true, and how to change their visions into re- 
alities. 

And as it was a hundred years ago, so it is now ; or at 
least, so it may be nov/. There are many bright dreams 
to be dreamed about India, and many bright deeds to be 
dune in India, if only you will do them. Though many 
great and glorious conquests have been made in the his- 
tory and literature of the East, since the days when Sir 
William Jones ^ landed at Calcutta, depend upon it, no 

* Sir William Jones was thirty-seven years of age when he sailed 
for India. He received the honor of knighthood in March, 1783, on 



WHAT CAN" IKDTA TEACH US ? 61 

young Alexander liere need despair because there are no 
kingdoms left for liim to conquer on the ancient shores 
of the Indus and the Ganges. 

his appointment as Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature at 
Fort William, at Bengal.— A. W. 



LECTURE 11 

TEUTHFUL CHAEACTER OF THE HliSTBUS. 

In my first Lecture I endeavored to remove the prej- 
udice that everything in India is strange, and so different 
from the intellectual life which we are accustomed to in 
England, that the twenty or twenty-five years which a 
civil servant has to spend in the East seem often to him 
a kind of exile that he must bear as well as he can, but 
that severs him completely from all those higher pursuits 
by which life is made enjoyable at home. This need not 
be so and ought not to be so, if only it is clearly seen 
how almost every one of the higher interests that make 
life worth living here in England, may find as ample 
scope in India as in England. 

To-day I shall have to grapple with another prejudice 
which is even more mischievous, because it forms a kind 
of icy barrier between the Hindus and their rulers, and 
makes anything like a feeling of true fellowship between 
the two utterly impossible. 

That prejudice consists in looking upon our stay in 
India as a kind of 7noral exile, and in regarding the 
Hindus as an inferior race, totally different from our- 
scx^igs in their moral character, and, more particularly in 
what forms the very foundation of the English charac- 
ter, respect for truth. 

1 believe there is nothing more disheartening to any 
high-minded young man than the idea tliat he will have 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HIITDUS. 53 

to spend liis life among human beings whom he can 
never respect or Jove — natives, as they are called, not to 
use even more offensive names — men whom he is taught 
to consider as not amenable to the recognized principles 
of self-respect, uprightness, and veracity, and with 
whom therefore any community of interests and action, 
much more any real friendship, is supposed to be out of 
the question. 

So often has that charge of untruthfulness been re- 
peated, and so generally is it now accepted, that it seems 
almost Quixotic to try to fight against it. 

]^or should I venture to fight this almost hopeless 
battle, if I were not convinced that such a charge, like 
all charges brought against a whole nation, rests on the 
most flimsy induction, and that it has done, is doing, 
and will continue to do more mischief than anything 
that even the bitterest enemy of English dominion in 
India could have invented. If a young man who goes 
to India as a civil servant or as a military officer, goes 
there fully convinced that the people whom he is to 
meet with are all liars, liars by nature or by national in- 
stinct, never restrained in their dealings by any regard 
for truth, never to be trusted on their word, need we 
wonder at the feelings of disgust with which he thinks 
of the Hindus, even before he has seen them ; the feel- 
ings of distrust with which he approaches them, and the 
contemptuous way in which he treats them when brought 
into contact with them for the transaction of public or 
private business ? When such tares have once been sown 
by the enemy, it will be difficult to gather them up. It 
has become almost an article of faith with every Indian 
civil servant that all Indians are liars ; nay, I know T 
shall never be forgiven for my heresy in venturing to 
doubt it. 



54 LECTURE II. 

'Now, quite apart from India, I feel most strongly that 
every one of these international condemnations is to be 
deprecated, not only for the sake of the self -conceited 
and uncharitable state of mind from which they spring, 
and which they serve to strengthen and confirm, bnt for 
pnrely logical reasons also, namely for the reckless and 
slovenly character of the induction on which snch con- 
chisions rest. Because a man has travelled in Greece 
and has been cheated by his dragoman, or been carried 
off by brigands, does it follow that all G-reeks, ancient as 
well as modern, are cheats and robbers, or that they ap- 
prove of cheating and robbery ? And because in Cal- 
cutta, or Bombay, or Madras, Indians who are brought 
before judges, or who hang about the law-courts and the 
bazaars, are not distinguished by an unreasoning and 
uncompromising love of truth, is it not a very vicious 
induction to say, in these days of careful reasoning, that 
all Hindus are liars — particularly if you bear in mind 
that, according to the latest census, the number of in- 
habitants of that vast country amounts to two hundred 
and fifty-three millions. Are all these two hundred and 
fifty-three millions of human beings to be set down as 
liars, because some hundreds, say even some thousands of 
Indians, when they are brought to an English court of 
law, on suspicion of having committed a theft or a mur- 
der, do not speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth ? Would an English sailor, if brought be- 
fore a dark-skinned judge, who spoke English with a 
strange accent, bow down before him and confess at once 
any misdeed that he may have committed ; and would 
all his mates rush forward and eagerly bear witness 
against him, when he had got himself into trouble ? 

The rules of induction are general, but they depend on 
the subjects to which they are applied. We may, to 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 55 

follow an Indian proverb, judge of a whole field of rice 
by tasting one or two grains only, but if we apply this 
rule to human beings, we are sure to fall into the same 
mistake as the English chaplain who had once, on board 
an English vessel, christened a French child, and who 
remained fully convinced for the rest of his life that all 
French babies had very long noses. 

I can hardly think of anything that you could safely 
predicate of all the inhabitants of India, and 1 confess to 
a little nervous tremor whenever I see a sentence begin- 
ning with *^ The people of India," or even with ^' All 
the Brahmans," or ^'All the Buddhists." What fol- 
lows is almost invariably wrong. There is a greater 
difference between an Afghan, a Sikh, a Hindustani, a 
Bengalese, and a Dravidian than between an English- 
man, a Frenchman, a German, and a Russian — yet all 
are classed as Hindus, and all are supposed to fall under 
the same sweeping condemnation. 

Let me read you what Sir John Malcolm says about 
the diversity of character to be, observed by any one who 
has eyes to observe, among the different races whom we 
promiscuously call Hindus, and whom we promiscuously 
condemn as Hindus. After describing the people of 
Bengal as weak in body and timid in mind, and those 
below Calcutta as the lowest of our Hindu subjects, both 
in character and appearance, he continues : '^ But from 
the moment you enter the district of Behar, the Hindu 
inhabitants are a race of men, generally speaking, not 
more distinguished by their lofty stature and robust 
frame than they are for some of the finest qualities of 
the mind. They are brave, generous, humane, and their 
truth is as remarkable as their courage." 

But because I feel bound to protest against the indis- 
criminating abuse that has been heaped on the peojDle of 



5G LECTURE II. 

India from tlie Himalaya to Ceylon, do not suppose that 
it is mj wish or intention to draw an ideal picture of 
India, leaving out all the dark shades, and giving you 
nothing hut ^^ sweetness and light." Having never 
been in India myself, I can only claim for myself the 
right and duty of every historian, namely, the right of 
collecting as much information as possible, and the duty 
to sift it according to the recognized rules of historical 
criticism. My chief sources of information with regard 
to the national character of the Indians in ancient times 
will be the works of Greek writers and the literature of 
the ancient Indians themselves. For later times we 
must depend on the statements of the various conquerors 
of India, who are not always the most lenient judges of 
those whom they may find it more difiicult to rule than 
to conquer. For the last century to the present day, I 
shall have to appeal, j^artly to the authority of those 
who, after spending an active life in India and among 
the Indians, have given us the benefit of their experi- 
ence in published works, partly to the testimony of a 
number of distinguished civil servants and of Indian 
gentlemen also, whose personal acquaintance I have 
enjoyed in England, in France, and in G-ermany. 

As I have chiefly to address myself to those who will 
themselves be the rulers and administrators of India in the 
future, allow me to begin with the opinions which some 
of the most eminent, and, I believe, the most judicious 
among the Indian civil servants of the past have formed 
and deliberately expressed on the point which we are to- 
dity discussing, namely, the veracity or want of veracity 
among the Hindus. 

And here I must begin with a remark which has been 
made by others also, namely, that the civil servants who 
went to India in the beginning of this century, and 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 57 

under the auspices of the old East India Company, many 
of whom I had the honor and pleasure of knowing when 
1 first came to England, seemed to have seen a great deal 
more of native life, native manners, and native character 
than those whom 1 had to examine five-and-twenty years 
ago, and who are now, after a distinguished career, com- 
ing back to England. India is no longer the distant 
island which it was, where each Crusoe had to make a 
home for himself as best he could. With the short and 
easy voyages from England to India and from India to 
England, with the frequent mails, and the telegrams, 
and the Anglo-Indian newspapers, official life in India 
has assumed the character of a temporary exile rather, 
which even English ladies are now more ready to share 
than fifty years ago. This is a difficulty which cannot 
be removed, but must be met, and v>^hich, I believe, can 
best be met by inspiring the new civil servants with new 
and higher interests during their stay in India. 

I knew the late Professor Wilson, our Boden Professor 
of Sanskrit at Oxford, for many yeai*s, and often listened 
with deep interest to his Indian reminiscences. 

Let me read you what he. Professor Wilson, says of 
his native friends, associates, and servants : * 

" I lived, both from necessity and choice, very much 
among the Hindus, and had opportunities of becoming- 
acquainted with them in a greater variety of situations 
than those in which they usually come under the observa- 
tion of Europeans. In the Calcutta mint, for instance, 
I was in daily personal communication with a numerous 
body of artificers, mechanics, and laborers, and always 
found among them cheerful and unwearied industry, 
good-humored compliance with the will of their superi- 

* Mill's "History of British India," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 375. 



58 LECTURE II. 

ors, and a readiness to make whatever exertions were 
demanded from tliem ; there was among them no drunk- 
enness, no disorderly conduct, no insubordination. It 
would not be true to say that there was no dishonesty, 
but it was comparatively rare, invariably petty, and 
much less formidable than, I believe, it is necessary to 
guard against in other mints in other countries. There 
was considerable skill and ready docility. So far from 
there being any servility, there was extreme frankness, 
and I should say that where there is confidence without 
fear, frankness is one of the most universal features in 
the Indian character. Let the people feel sure of the 
temper and good-will of their superiors, and there is an 
end of reserve and timidity, without the slightest depart- 
ure from respect. . . ." 

Then, speaking of the much-abused Indian Pandits, 
he says : '^ The studies which engaged my leisure 
brought me into connection with the men of learning, 
and in them I found the similar merits of industry, in- 
telligence, cheerfulness, frankness, with others peculiar 
to their avocation. A very common characteristic of 
tliese men, and of the Hindus especially, was a sim- 
plicity truly childish, and a total unacquaintance with 
the business and manners of life. Where that feature 
was lost, it was chiefly by those who had been long 
familiar with Europeans. Among the Pandits or the 
learned Hindus there prevailed great ignorance and 
great dread of the European character. There is, in- 
deed, very little intercourse between any class of Euro- 
pei]:is and Hindu scholars, and it is not wonderful, there- 
fore, that mutual misapprehension should prevail. ' ' 

Speaking, lastly, of the higher classes in Calcutta and 
elsewhere. Professor Wilson says that he witnessed 
among them " polished manners, clearness and compre- 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 59 

hensiveness of understanding, liberality of feeling, and 
independence of principle that would have stamped them 
gentlemen in any country in the world." " With some 
of this class," he adds, '' I formed friendships which 1 
trust to enjoy through life." 

I have often heard Professor Wilson speak in the 
same, and in even stronger terms of his old friends in 
India, and his correspondence with Ram Comul Sen, the 
grandfather of Keshub Chunder Sen,* a most orthodox, 
not to say bigoted, Hindu, which has lately been pub- 
lished, shows on what intimate terms Englishmen and 
Hindus may be, if only the advances are made on the 
English side. 

There is another Professor of Sanskrit, of whom your 
University may well be proud, and who could speak on 
this subject with far greater authority than 1 can. He 
too will tell you, and 1 have no doubt has often told you, 
that if only you look out for friends among the Hindus, 
you will find them, and you may trust them. 

There is one book which for many years i have been 
in the habit of recommending, and another against v\^hich 
I have always been warning those of the candidates for 
the Indian Civil Service whom I happened to see at Ox- 
ford ; and I believe both the advice and the warning 
have in several cases borne the very best fruit. The 
book which I consider most mischievous, nay, which 1 
hold responsible for some of the greatest misfortunes that 
have happened to India, is Mill's "History of British 
India," even with the antidote against its poison, which 
is supplied by Professor Wilson's notes. The book 
which I recommend, and which I wish might be pub- 

* Keshub Chunder Sen is the present spiritual director of the 
Brahmo Samagf, the theistic organization founded by the late Kam- 
mohun Eoy.— A. W. 



60 LECTURE • II. 

lislied again in a cheaper form, so as to make it more 
generally accessible, is Colonel Sleeman's '' Kambles and 
Eecollections of an Indian Official," published in 1844, 
but written originally in 1835-1836. 

Mill's " History," no doubt, you all know, particu- 
larly the candidates for the Indian Civil Service, who, I 
am sorry to say, are recommended to read it, and are ex- 
amined in it. Still, in order to substantiate my strong 
condemnation of the book, I shall have to give a few 
proofs : 

Mill in his estimate of the Hindu cliaracter is chiefly 
guided by Dubois, a French missionary, and by Orme 
and Buchanan, Tennant, and Ward, all of them neither 
very competent nor very unprejudiced judges. Mill,* 
however, picks out all that is most unfavorable from 
their works, and omits the qualifications which even 
these writers felt bound to give to their wholesale con- 
demnation of the Hindus. He quotes as serious, for in- 
stance, what was said in joke,t namely, that '^ a Brah- 
man is an ant's nest of lies and impostures." Next to 
the charge of untruthfulness, Mill upbraids the Hindus 
for what he calls their litigiousness. He writes : if ''As 
often as courage fails them in seeking more daring grati- 
fication to their hatred and revenge, their malignity finds 
a vent in the channel of litigation." Without imputing 
dishonorable motives, as Mill does, the same fact might 
be stated in a different way, by saying, ''As often as 
their conscience and respect of law keep them from 
seeking more daring gratification to their hatred and 
rev(3?ige, say by murder or poisoning, their trust in Eng- 
lish justice leads them to appeal to our courts of law." 
Dr. Robertson, in his " Historical Disquisitions concern- 

* Mill's "History," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 368, 

f L. c. p. 325. I L. c. p. 329. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE Hli^q^DUS. Gl 

ing India,'' * seems to have considered the litigious sub- 
tlety of the Hindus as a sign of high civilization rather 
than of barbarism, but he is sharj^ly corrected by Mr. 
Mill, who tells him that " nowhere is this subtlety car- 
ried higher than among the wildest of the Irish." That 
courts of justice, like the English, in which a verdict 
was not to be obtained, as formerly in Mohammedan 
courts, by bribes and corruption, should at first have 
proved very attractive to the Hindus, need not surprise 
us. But is it really true that the Hindus are more fond 
of litigation than other nations ? If we consult Sir 
Thomas Munro, the eminent Governor of Madras, and 
the powerful advocate of the Kyotwar settlements, he 
tells us in so many words : f ' ' I have had ample oppor- 
tunity of observing the Hindus in every situation, and I 
can affirm, that they are not litigious. ' ' J 

But Mill goes further still, and in one place he actually 
assures his readers § that a ' ' Brahman may put a man 
to death when he lists." In fact, he represents the 
Hindus as such a monstrous mass of all vices, that, as 
Colonel Vans Kennedy || remarked, society could not 
have held together if it had really consisted of such 
reprobates only. Nor does he seem to see the full bear- 
ing of his remarks. Surely, if a Brahman might, as he 
says, put a man to death whenever he lists, it would be 
the strongest testimony in their favor that you hardly 
ever hear of their availing themselves of such a privi- 
lege, to say nothing of the fact — and a fact it is — that, 
according to statistics, the number of capital sentences 

* P. 217. f Mill's "History," vol. i., p. 329. 

:{: Mann, VIII. 43, says : ''Neither a King himself nor his officers 
must ever promote litigation ; nor ever neglect a lawsuit instituted 
by others." 

§ Mill's " History," vol. i., p. 327. |j L. c. p. 368. 



62 LECTURE li. 

was one in every 10,000 in England, but only one in 
every million in Bengal.^ 

Colonel Sleeman's ^'Rambles" are less known than 
they deserve to be. To give you an idea of the man, I 
must read you some extracts from the book. 

His sketches being originally addressed to his sister, 
this is how he writes to her : 

'' My deak Sister : Were any one to ask your coun- 
trymen in India, what had been their greatest source of 
pleasure while there, perhaps nine in ten would say the 
letters which they receive from their sisters at home. 
And while thus contributing so much to our 
happiness, they no doubt tend to make us better citizens 
of the world and servants of government than we 
should otlierwise be ; for in our ' struggles through life ' 
in India, we have all, more or less, an eye to the appro- 
bation of those circles which our kind sisters represent, 
who may therefore be considered in the exalted light of 
a valuable species of unpaid magistracy to the govern- 
ment of India. ' ' 

There is a touch of the old English chivalry even in 
these few words addressed to a sister whose approbation 
he values, and with whom he hoped to spend the winter 
of his days. Having been, as he confesses, idle in an- 
swering letters, or rather, too busy to find time for long 
letters, he made use of his enforced leisure, while on his 
way from the l!^erbuddah River to the Himmaleh Moun- 
tains, in search of health, to give to his sister a full 
account of his impressions and experiences in India. 

* See Elphinstone, "History of India," ed. Cowell, p. 219, note. 
" Of the 232 sentences of death. 64 only were carried out in England, 
while the 59 sentences of death in Bengal were all carried out." 



-TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE Hli^DUS. 63 

Though what ho wrote was intended at first '^ to interest 
and amuse liis sister only and the other members of 
his family at home," he adds, in a more serious tone : 
'' Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that I 
have nowhere indulged in fiction, either in tlie narra- 
tive, the recollections, or the conversations. What I 
relate on the testimony of others, I believe to be true ; 
and what I relate on my own, you may rely upon as 
being so." 

When placing his volumes before the public at large 
in 1844, he expresses a hope that they may "tend to 
make the people of India better understood by those of 
our countrymen whose destinies are cast among them, 
and inspire more kindly feelings toward them. ' ' 

You may ask why I consider Colonel Sleeman so 
trustworthy an authority on the Indian character, more 
trustworthy, for instance, than even so accurate and 
unprejudiced an observer as Professor Wilson. My an- 
swer is — because Wilson lived chiefiy in Calcutta, while 
Colonel Sleeman saw India, vv^here alone the true India 
can be seen, namely, in the village-communities. For 
many years he was employed as Commissioner for the 
suppression of Thuggee. The Thugs were professional 
assassins, who committed their murders under a kind of 
religious sanction. They were originally ''all Moham- 
medans, but for a long time past Mohammedans and 
Hindus had been indiscriminately associated in the gangs, 
the former class, however, still predominating. ' ' ^ 

In order to Imnt up these gangs. Colonel Sleeman luid 

* Sir Ch. Trevelyan, Christianity and Hinduism, 1882, p. 42. 

This will be news to many. It has been quite common to in- 
clude the Thugs with the worshiijpers of Bhavani, the consort of .s'iva. 
The word signifies a deceiver, which eliminates it from every re- 
ligious association. - A. W. 



64 LECTURE II. 

constantly to live among the people in the country, to 
gain their confidence, and to watch the good as well as 
the bad features in their character. 

l^ow what Colonel Sleeman continually insists on is 
that no one knows the Indians who does not know them 
in their village- communities — what we should now call 
their coimiiunes. It is that village-life which in India 
has given its pecuHar impress to the Indian character, 
more so than in any other country we know. When in 
Indian history we hear so much ol kings and emperors, 
of rajahs and maharajahs, we are apt to think of India as 
an Eastern monarchy, ruled by a central power, and 
without any trace of that self-government which forms 
the pride of England. But those who have most care- 
fully studied the political life of India tell you the very 
opposite. 

The political unit, or the social cell in India has always 
been, and, in spite of repeated foreign conquests, is still 
tlie village- community. Some of these political units 
will occasionally combine or be combined for common 
purposes (such a confederacy being called a grama^ala), 
but each is perfect in itself. When we read in the Laws 
of Manu * of officers appointed to rule over ten, twenty, 
a hundred, or a thousand of these villages, that means 
no more than that they were responsible for the collec- 
tion of taxes, and generally for the good behavior of 
these villages. And when, in later times, we hear of 
circles of eighty-four villages, the so-called Chourasees 
(A^turasiti f), and of three hundred and sixty villages, 
this too seems to refer to fiscal arrangements only. To 
the ordinary Hindu, I mean to ninety-nine in every 

* Marni VII. 115. 

\ H. M. Elliot, "Supplement to the Glossary of Indian Terms," 
p. 151. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 65 

hundred, the village was his world, and the sphere of 
public opinion, with its beneficial influences on individ^ 
uals, seldom extended beyond the horizon of his village."^ 

Colonel Sleeman was one of the first who called atten- 
tion to the existence of these village-communities in 
India, and their importance in the social fabric of the 
whole country both in ancient and in modern times ; and 
though they have since become far better known and 
celebrated through the writings of Sir Henry Maine, it 
is still both interesting and instructive to read Colonel 
Sleeman' s account. He writes as a mere observer, and 
uninfluenced as yet by any theories on the development 
of early social and political life among the Aryan nations 
in general. 

I do not mean to say that Colonel Sleeman was the 
first who pointed out the palpable fact that the whole of 
India is parcelled out into estates of villages. Even so 
early an observer as Megasthenes f seems to have been 
struck by the same fact when he says that " in India the 
husbandmen with their wives and children live in the 
country, and entirely avoid going into town." What 
Colonel Sleeman was the first to point out was that all 

* I see from Dr. Hunter's latest statistical tables that the whole 
number of towns and villages in British India amounts to 493,429. 
Out of this number 448,320 have less than 1000 inhabitants, and 
may be called villages. In Bengal, where the growth of towns has 
been most encouraged through Government establishments, the 
total number of homesteads is 117,042, and more than half of 
these contain less than 200 inhabitants. Only 10,077 towns in 
Bengal have more than 1000 inhabitants, that is, no more than 
about a seventeenth part of all the settlements are anything but 
what we should call substantial villages. In the North-Western 
Provinces the last census gives us 105,124 villages, against 297 
towns. See London Times, 14th Aug. 1882. 

f "Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian," bjr 
McCrindle, p. 43, 



66 LEGTUKE II. 

the native virtues of the Hiudns are intimately connected 
with their village-hfe. 

That village-life, however, is naturally the least 
known to English officials, nay, the very presence of an 
English official is often said to be sufficient to drive away 
those native virtues which distinguish both the private 
life and the ]3ublic administration of justice and equity 
in an Indian village.^' Take a man out of his village- 
community, and you remove him from all the restraints 
of society. He is out of his element, and, under temp- 
tation, is more likely to go wrong than to remain true to 
the traditions of his home-life. Even between village 
and village the usual I'estraints of public morality are not 
always recognized. What would be called theft or rob- 
bery at home is called a successful raid or conquest if 
directed against distant villages ; and what would be 
falsehood or trickery in private life is honored by the 
name of policy and diplomacy if successful against stran- 
gers. On the other hand, the rules of hospitality ap- 
plied only to people of other villages, and a man of the 
same village could never claim the right of an Atithi^ or 
guest, f 

Let us hear now what Colonel Sleeman tells us about, 
the moral character of the members of these village- 
communities, if and let us not forget that the Commis- 

* "Perjury seems to be committed by the meanest and encouraged 
by some of the better sort among the Hindus and Mussulmans, 
■with as little remorse as if it were a proof of ingenuity, or even 
a merit." — Sir W, Jones, Address to Grand Jury at Calcutta, in 
Mill's "Historj^ of India," vol. i., p. 324. "The longer we possess a 
province, the more common and grave does perjury become." — Sir 
G. Campbell, quoted by Eev. Samuel Johnson, " Oriental Eeligions, 
India," p. 288. 

f YasishZ/ja, translated by Biihler, VIII. 8. 

:j;Mr. J. D. Baldwin, author of "Prehistoric Nations," declares 



TRUTHFLTL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 67 

sioner for the suppression of Thuggee had ample oppor- 
tunities of seeing the dark as well as the bright side of 
the Indian character. 

He assures us that falsehood or lying between mem- 
bers of the same village is almost unknown. Speaking 
of some of the most savage tribes, the Gonds, for 
instance, he maintains that nothing would induce them 
to tell a lie, though they would think nothing of lifting 
a herd of cattle from a neighboring plain. 

Of these men it might perhaps be said that they have 
not yet learned the value of a lie ; yet even such blissful 
ignorance ought to count in a nation's character. But I 
am not pleading here for Gonds, or Bhils, or Santhals, 
and other non- Aryan tribes. I am speaking of the 
Aryan and more or less civilized inhabitants of India. 
Now among them, where rights, duties, and interests 
begin to clash in one and the same village, public opin- 

that this system of village-communities existed in India long before 
the Aryan conquest. He attributes it to Cushite or ^thiopic in- 
fluence, and with great plausibility. Nevertheless, the same system 
'flourished in prehistoric Greece, even till the Koman conquests. 
Mr. Palgrave observed it existing in Arabia. " Oman is less a king- 
dom than an aggregation of municipalities," he remarks ; " each 
town, each village has its separate existence and corporation, while 
towns and villages, in their turn, are subjected to one or other of 
the ancestral chiefs." The Ionian and Phoenician cities existed by 
a similar tenure, as did also the Free Cities of Europe. It appears, 
indeed, to have been the earlier form of rule. Megasthenes noticed 
it in India. '* The village-communities," says Sir Charles Metcalf, 
' ' are little republics, having everything they want within them- 
selves, and almost independent of any foreign relations. They se-em 
to last where nothing else lasts." These villages usually consist of 
the holders of the land, those who farm and cultivate it, the estab- 
lished village-servants, priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, 
washerman, potter, barber, watchman, shoemaker, etc. The tenure 
and law of inheritance varies with the different native races, but ten- 
antship for a specific period seems to be the most common. — A. W. 



68 LECTURE II. 

ion, in its limited sphere, seems strong enough to deter 
even an evil-disposed person from telling a falsehood. 
The fear of the gods also has not yet lost its power. "^ 
In most villages there is a sacred tree, a pipal-tree (Ficus 
Tndica), and the gods are supposed to delight to sit 
am.ong its leaves, and listen to the music of their rust- 
ling. The deponent takes one of these leaves in his 
hand, and invokes the god, who sits above him, to crush 
him, or those dear to him, as he crushes the leaf in his 
hand, if he speaks anything but the truth. He then 
plucks and crushes the leaf, and states what he has to 
say. 

The pipal-tree is generally supposed to be occupied by 
one of the Hindu deities, while the large cotton-tree, 
particularly among the wilder tribes, is supposed to be 
the abode of local gods, all the more terrible because 
entrusted with the police of a small settlement only. In 
their puncliayets, Sleeman tells us, men adhere habitu- 
ally and religiously to the truth, and '^ I have had before 
me hundreds of cases," he says, '^ in which a man's prop- 
erty, liberty, and life has depended upon his telling a 
lie, and he has refused to tell it." 

Could many an English judge say the same ? 

In their own tribunals under the pipal-tree or cotton- 
tree, imagination commonly did what the deities, who 
were supposed to preside, had the credit of doing. If 
the deponent told a lie, he believed that the god who sat 
on his sylvan throne above him, and searched the heart 
^f man, must knoAV it ; and from that moment he knew 
no rest, he was always in dread of his vengeance. If 
any accident happened to him, or to those dear to him, 
it vfas attributed to this offended deity ; and if no acci- 

* " Sleenaan," vol. ii.^ p. Ill, 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HmDUS. 69 

dent happened, some evil was brought about bj his own 
disordered imagination.'^ It was an excellent supersti- 
tion, inculcated in the ancient law-books, that the ances- 
tors watched the answer of a witness, because, according 
as it was true or false, they themselves w^ould go to 
heaven or to hell.f 

Allow me to read you the abstract of a conversation 
between an Enghsh ofl&cial and a native law-officer as 
reported by Colonel Sleeman. The native lawyer was 
asked what he thought would be the effect of an act to 
dispense with oaths on the Koran and Ganges-water, and 
to substitute a solemn declaration made in the name of 
God, and under the same penal liabilities as if the Koran 
or Ganges- water had been in the deponent's hand. 

''I have practiced in the courts," the native said, 
" for thirty years, and during that time 1 have found 
only three kinds of witnesses — two of whom would, by 
such an act, be left precisely where they were, while the 
third would be released by it from a very salutary 
check." 

''And, pray, what are the three classes into which 
you divide the witnesses in our courts ?" 

" First, Sir, are those w^ho will always tell the truth, 
whether they are required to state what they know, in 
the form of an oath or not. ' ' 

'' Do you think this a large class ?" 

' ' Yes, I think it is ; and 1 have found among them 
many whom nothing on earth could make to swerve 
from the truth. Do what you please, you could never 
frighten or bribe them into a deliberate falsehood. 

" The second are those who will not hesitate to tell a 
lie when they have a motive for it, and are not restrained 

J 

* Sleeman, " Eambles," vol. ii., p. 116. f Vasish/Aa XVI. 32. 



70 LECTURE II. 

1);/ an oatli. In taking an oatli, they are afraid of two 
things, the anger of God and tlie odium of men. 

^' Only three days ago," he continued, '^ I required a 
power of attorney from a lady of rank, to enable me to 
act for her in a case pending before the court in this 
town. It was gis^en to me by her brother, and two wit- 
nesses came to declare that she had given it. ^ ISTow, ' 
said I, ' this lady is known to live under the curtain, and 
you will be asked by the judge whether you saw her 
give this paper : what will you say ? ' They both 
replied : ^ If the judge asks us the question without an 
oath, we will say '^ Yes ^'^^ it will save much trouble, and 
we know that she did give the paper, though we did not 
really see her give it ; but if he puts the Koran into our 
liands, we must say " iV^(9," for we should otherwise be 
pointed at by all the town as perjured wretches — our 
enemies would soon tell everybody that we had taken a 
false oath.' 

" E'ow," the native lawyer went on, '' the form of an 
oath is a great check on this sort of persons. 

'^ The third class consists of men who will tell lies 
whenever they have a sufficient motive, whether they 
have the Koran or Ganges-water in their hand or not. 
Nothing will ever prevent their doing so ; and the dec- 
laration which you propose would be just as well as any 
other for them." 

H^Which class do you consider the most numerous of 
the ttiree?" 

" I consider the second the most numerous, and wish 
the oath to be retained for them." 

'^ That is, of all the men you see examined in our 
courts, you think the most come under the class of those 
who will, under the influence of strong motives, tell lies, if 
they have not the Koran or Ganges -water in their hands ?" 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTEK OF THE HINDUS. 71 

' ' But do not a great many of those whom you con- 
sider to be induded among the second class come from 
the village-communities — the peasantry of the country ?" 

"Yes." 

" And do you not think that the greatest part of those 
men who will tell lies in the court, under the influence 
of strong motives, unless they have the Koran or 
Ganges- water in their hands, would refuse to tell lies, if 
questioned before the people of their villages, among the 
circle in which they live ?" 

" Of course I do ; three-fourths of those who do not 
scruple to lie in the courts, would be ashamed to lie 
before their neighbors, or the elders of their village." 

'^ You think that the people of the village- communi- 
ties are more ashamed to tell lies before their neighbors 
than the people of towns ?" 

" Much more — there is no comparison." 

" And the people of towns and cities bear in India but 
a small proportion to the people of the village-communi- 
ties ?" 

'' I should think a very small proportion indeed." 

" Then you think that in the mass of the population 
of India, out of our courts, the first class, or those who 
speak truth, whether they have the Koran or Ganges- 
water in their hands or not, would be found rnore 
numerous than the other two ?" 

" Certainly I do ; if they were always to be ques- 
tioned before their neighbors or elders, so that they could 
feel that their neighbors and elders could know what 
they say. ' ' 

It was from a simple sense of justice that I felt bound 
to quote this testimony of Colonel Sleeman as to the 
truthful character of the natives of India, when left to 



72 LECTUEE II. 

themselves. My interest lies altogether with the people 
of India, wJien left to themselves, and historically I 
should like to draw a line after the year one thousand 
after Christ. When you read the atrocities committed 
by the Mohammedan conquerors of India from that time 
to the time when England stepped in and, whatever may 
be said by her envious critics, made, at all events, the 
broad principles of our common humanity respected once 
more in India, the wonder, to my mind, is how any 
nation could have survived such an Inferno without 
being turned into devils themselves. 

Now, it is quite true that during the two thousand 
years which precede the time of Mahmud of Gazni, 
India has had but few foreign visitors, and few foreign 
critics ; still it is surely extremely strange that whenever, 
either in Greek, or in Chinese, or in Persian, or in 
Arab writings, we meet with any attempts at describing 
the distinguishing features in the national character of 
the Indians, regard for truth and justice should always 
be mentioned first. 

Ktesias, the famous Greek physician of Artaxerxes 
Mnemon (present at the battle of Cunaxa, 404 e.g.), the 
first Greek writer who tells us anything about the char- 
acter of the Indians, such as he heard it described at the 
Persian court, has a special chapter " On the Justice of 
the Indians."* 

Megfisihe7ies,\ the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator at 
the court of Sandrocottus in Palibothra (Paz^aliputra, the 
modern Patna), states that thefts were extremely rare, 
and that they honored truth and virtue. J 

* KtesiaB Fragmenta (ed. Didot), p. 81. 
f See " Indian Antiquary," 1876, p. 333. 

\ Megasthenis Eragmenta (ed. Didot) in " Fragm. Histor. Graec." 
vol. ii,, p. 426 b : klrjQetdv re o/nolcjg Kal apcryv anodtXavrac. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HlifDUS. 73 

Arrian (in tlie second century, the pupil of Epictetus), 
when speaking of the j)^^hlic overseers or superintend- 
ents in India, says : ^ " They oversee what goes on in the 
country or towns, and rej^ort everything to the king, 
where the people have a king, and to the magistrates, 
where the people are self -governed, and it is against use! 
and wont for these to give in a false report ; hut indeed 
no Indian is accused of lying, f 

The Chinese, who come next in order of time, bear 
the same, I believe, unanimous testimony in favor of 
the honesty and veracity of the Hindus. [The earliest 
witness is Bu-we, a relative of Fan-chen, King of Siam, 
who between 222 and 227 a.d, sailed round the whole 
of India, till he reached the mouth of the Indus, and 
then explored the country. After his return to Sinto, 
he received four Yueh-chi horses, sent by a king of 
India as a present to the King of Siam and his ambassa- 
dor. At the time when these horses arrived in Siam (it 
took them four years to travel tbere), there was staying 
at the court of Siam an ambassador of the Emperor of 
China, Khang-thai, and this is the account which he 
received of the kingdom of India : '' It is a kingdom 
in wliicli the religion of Buddha flourishes. The inhabi- 
tants are straightforward and honest, and the soil is 
very fertile. The king is called Meu-lun, and his capi- 
tal is surrounded by walls," etc. This was in about 231 
A.D. In 605 we hear again of the Emperor Ya^g-ti 
sending an ambassador, Fei-tu, to India, and this is what 
among other things he points out as peculiar to the 
Hindus: "They believe in solemn oaths. "]:j: Let me 
quote Iliouen-thsang, the most famous of the Chinese 

* Indica, cap. xii. 6. 

f See McCrindle in " Indian Antiquary," 1876, p. ^2. 

\ See Stanislas Julien, Journal Asiatique, 1847, Aout, pp. 98, 105. 



74 LECTURE II. 

Buddhist pilgrims, who visited India in the seventh cen- 
tury."^ '' Though the Indians," he writes, " are of a light 
temperament, they are distinguished by the straightfor- 
wardness and honesty of their character. With regard 
to riches, they never take anything unjustly ; with regard 
to justice, they make even excessive concessions. . . . 
Straightforwardness is the distinguishing feature of their 
administration. ' ' 

^ If we turn to the accounts given by the Mohammedan 
conquerors of India, we find Idrisi, in his Geography 
(written in the eleventh century), summing up their 
opinion of the Indians in the following w^ords : t 

" The Indians are naturally inclined to justice, and 
never depart from it in their actions. Their good faith, 
honesty, and fidelity to their engagements are w^ell 
known, and they are so famous for these qualities that 
people fiock to their country from every side. ' ' 

Again, in the thirteenth century, Shems-ed-din Abu 
Abdallah quotes the following judgment of Bedi ezr 
Zenan : '' The Indians are innumerable, like grains of 
sand, free from all deceit and violence. They fear 
neither death nor life. ":{: 

In the thirteenth century we have the testimony of 
Marco Polo,§ who thus speaks of the Abraiar^ian^ a name 
by which he seems to mean the Brahmans who, though 
not traders by profession, might well have been em- 
ployed for great commercial transactions by the king. 
This was particularly the case during times which the 

* Vol. ii., p. 83. 

f Elliot, " History of India," vol. i., p. 88. 

\ See Mehren : " Manuel de la Cosmographie du moyen age, tra- 
duction de I'ouvrage de Shems-ed-din Abou Abdallah de Daiuas« 
Paris : Leroux, 1874, p. 371. 

§ " Marco Polo/' ed. H. Yule, vol. ii., p. 350. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HIN-DUS. 75 

Bralimans would call times of distress, when many 
things were allowed which at other times were forbidden 
by the laws. '^ Yqu must know," Marco Polo says, 
'' that these Abraiaman are the best merchants in the 
world, and the most truthful, for they would not tell a 
lie for anything on earth." 

In tlie fourteenth centuiy we have Friar Jordanus, 
who goes out of his way to tell us that the people of 
Lesser India (South and Western India) are true in 
speech and eminent in justice."^' 

In the fifteenth century, Kamal-eddin Abd-errazak 
Samarkandi (1413-1482), who went as ambassador of the 
Kliakan to the prince of Kalikut and to the King of 
Vidyanagara (about 1440-144:5), bears testimony to the 
perfect security which merchants enjoy in that country, f 

In the sixteenth century, Abu Fazl, the minister of 
the Emperor Akbar, says in his Ay in Akbari : ^' The 
Hindus are religious, affable, cheerful, lovers of justice, 
given to retirement, able in business, admirers of truth, 
grateful and of unbounded fidelity ; and their soldiers 
know not what it is to fly from the field of battle. :j: 

And even in quite modern times the Mohammedans 
seem willing to admit that the Hindus, at all events in 
their dealings with Hindus, are more straightforward 
than Mohammedans in their dealings with Mohamme- 
dans. 

Thus Meer Sulamut Ali, a venerable old Mussuhrfan, 
and, as Colonel Sleeman says, a most valuable public ser- 
vant, was obhged to admit that ^' a Hindu may feel him- 

* " Marco Polo," vol. ii., p. 354. 
. f " Notices des Manuscrits," torn, xiv., p. 436. He seems to have 
been one of the first to state that the Persian text of tlie Kalilah and 
Dimna was derived from the wise people of India. 

I Samuel Johnson, " India," p. 294. 



76 LECTURE II. 

self authorized to take in a Mussulman, and might even 
think it meritorious to do so ; but he would never think 
it meritorious to take in one of his own religion. 
There are no less than seventy-two sects of Mohamme- 
dans ; and every one of these sects would not only take 
in the followers of every other religion on earth, but 
every member of every one of the other seventy-one 
sects ; and the nearer that sect is to his own, the greater 
the merit of taking in its members."^ 

So I could go on quoting from book after book, and 
again and again we should see how it was love of truth 
that struck all the people who came in contact with 
India, as the prominent feature in the national character 
of its inhabitants. 'No one ever accused them of false- 
hood. There must surely be some ground for thig", for 
it is not a remark that is frequently made by travellers 
in foreign countries, even in our time, that their inhabi- 
tants invariably speak the truth. Read the accounts of 
English travellers in France, and you will find very little 
said about French honesty and veracity, while French 
accounts of England are seldom without a fling at Per- 
fide Albion ! 

But if all this is true, how is it, you may well ask, 
that public opinion in England is so decidedly unfriendly 
to the people of India; at the utmost tolerates and 
patronizes them, but will never trust them, never treat 
thein^ on terms of equality ? 

I have already hinted at some of the reasons. Public 
opinion with regard to India is made up in England 
chiefly by those who have spent their lives in Calcutta, 
Bombay, Madras, or some other of the principal towns 
in India. The native element in such towns contains 

* Sleeman, " Rambles," vol. i., p. 63. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 77 

mostly the most unfavorable specimens of the Indian 
population. An insight into the domestic life of the 
more respectable classes, even in towns, is difficult to 
obtain ; and, when it is obtained, it is extremely difficult 
to judge of their manners according to our standard of 
what is proper, respectable, or gentlemanlike. The 
misunderstandings are frequent and often most gro- 
tesque ; and such, we must confess, is human nature, 
that when we hear the different and often most conflict- 
ing accounts of the character of the Hindus, we are nat- 
urally skeptical with regard to unsuspected virtues 
among them, wiaile we are quite disposed to accept un- 
favorable accounts of their character. 

Lest I should seem to be pleading too much on the 
native side of the question, and to exaggerate the diffi- 
culty of forming a correct estimate of the character of 
the Hindus, let me appeal to one of the most distin- 
guished, learned, and judicious members of the Indian- 
Civil Service, the author of the ^^ History of India," 
Mountstuart Elphinstone. *' Englishmen in India, ""^ 
he says, '^ have less opportunity than might be expected 
of forming opinions of the native character. Even in 
England, few know much of the people beyond their 
own class, and what they do know, they learn from 
newspapers and publications of a description which does 
not exist in India. In that country also, religion and 
manners put bars to our intimacy with the natives, and 
limit the number of transactions as well as the free com- 
munication of opinions. We know nothing of the inte- 
rior of families but by report, and have no share in 
those numerous occurrences of life in which the amiable 
parts of character are most exhibited. " ^^ Missionaries of 

* Elphinstone' s " History of India," ed. Covrell, p. 213. 



78 LECTURE II. 

a different religion,^ judges, polioe-magistrates, officers 
of revenue or customs, and even diplomatists, do not see 
the most virtuous portion of a nation, nor any portion, 
unless when influenced by passion, or occupied by some 
personal interest. What we do see we judge by our ow^n 
standard. We conclude that a man who cries like a 
child on slight occasions must always be incapable of 
acting or suffering with dignity ; and that one who 
allows himself to be called a liar would not be ashamed 
of any baseness. Our writers also confound the distinc- 
tions of time and place ; they combine in one character 
the Maratta and the Bengalese, and tax the present 
generation with the crimes of the heroes of the Maha- 
bharata. It might be argued, in opposition to many un- 
favorable testimonies, that those who have known the 
Indians longest have always the best opinion of them ; 
but this is rather a compliment to human nature than to 
them, since it is true of every other people. It is more 
in point, that all persons who have retired from India 
think better of the people they have left, after compar- 
ing them with others, even of the most justly- admired 
nations." 

But what is still more extraordinary than the ready 
acceptance of judgments unfavorable to the character of 
the Hindus, is the determined way in which public opin- 
ion, swayed by the statements of certain unfavorable 
critics, has persistently ignored the evidence which 
members of the Civil Service, officers and statesmen — 
men of the highest authority — have given again and 
again, in direct opposition to these unfavorable opinions. 

* This statement may well be doubted. The missionary staff In 
India is very large and has been for years past. There is no reason to 
donbt that many of its .members are well informed respecting Hindoo 
character in all grades of society. — Am. Pubs. 



TRUTHFUL CHAKACTER OF THE HrNDUS. 79 

Here, too, I must ask to be allowed to quote at least a 
few of these witnesses on the other side. 

"Warren Hastings tlms speaks of the Hindus in general : 
^' Thej are gentle and benevolent, more susceptible of 
gratitude for kindness shown them, and less prompted to 
vengeance for wTongs inflicted than any people on the 
face of the earth ; faithful, affectionate, submissive to 
legal authority." 

Bishop Heber said : '' The Hindus are brave, court- 
eous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and improve- 
ment ; sober, industi'ious, dutiful to parents, affection- 
ate to their children, uniform!}^ gentle and patient, and 
more easily affected by kindness and attention to their 
wants and feelings than any people 1 ever met with."* 

Elphinstone states : '' 'No set of people among the 
Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great 
towns. The villagers are every v/here amiable, affec- 
tionate to their famiilies, kind to their neighbors, and 
toward all but the government honest and sincere. In- 
cluding the Thugs and Dacoits, the mass of crime is less 
in India than in England. The Thugs are almost a 
separate nation, and the Dacoits are desperate ruffians in 
gangs. The Hindus are mild and gentle people, more 
merciful to prisoners than any other Asiatics. Their 
freedom from gross debauchery is the point in which 
they appear to most advantage ; and their superiority in 
purity of manners is not flattering to our self-esteem, "f 

Yet Elphinstone can be most severe on the real faults 
of the people of India. He states that, at present, want 
of veracity is one of their prominent vices, but lie adds X 
'' that such deceit is most common in people connected 



* Samuel Johnson, " India," p. 293. 

f See " History of India," pp. 375-381. t L. c, p. 215. 



80 LECTUKE II. 

witli government, a class which spreads far in India, as, 
from the nature of the land-revenne, the lowest villager 
is often obliged to resist force bj fraud."* 

Sir John Malcolm writes : f ^' I have hardly ever 
known where a person did understand the language, or 
where a calm communication was made to a native of 
India, through a well-informed and trustworthy me- 
dium, that the result did not prove, that what had at 
first been stated as falsehood had either proceeded from 
fear or from misapprehension. I by no means wish to 
state that our Indian subjects are more free from this 
vice than other nations that occupy a nearly equal posi- 
tion in society, but I am positive that they are not more 
addicted to untruth." 

Sir Thomas Munro bears even stronger testimony. 
He writes : :j: *^ If a good system of agriculture, unrival- 
led manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever 
can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools 
established in every village for teaching reading, writ- 
ing, and arithmetic,§ the general practice of hospitality 
and charity among each other, and, above all, a treatment 
of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and deli- 

* " History of India," p. 218. 

f Mill's " History of India," ed. Wilson, vol. i., p. 370. 

t L. c, p. 371. 

§ Sir Thomas Munro estimated the children educated at public 
schools in the Madras presidency as less than one in three. But low 
as it was, it was, as he justly remarked, a higher rate than existed 
till very lately in most countries of Europe. — Elphinstone, " Hist, of 
India," p. 205. 

In Bengal there existed no less than 80,000 native schools, though, 
doubtless, for the most part, of a poor quality. According to a 
Government Keport of 1835, there was a village-school for every 400 
persons. — ** Missionary Intelligencer," IX. 183-193. 

Ludlow (" British India," I. 62) writes : " In every Hindu village 
which has retained its old form I am assured that the children gen- 



TEUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HIITDUS. 81 

cacj, are among the signs which denote a civilized peo- 
ple — then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of 
Europe — and if civilization is to become an article of 
trade between England and India, I am convinced that 
England will gain by the import cargo. ' ' 

Mj own experience with regard to the native charac- 
ter has been, of course, very limited. Those Hindus 
whom I have had the pleasure to know personally in 
Europe may be looked upon as exceptional, as the best 
specimens, it may be, that India could produce. Also, 
my intercourse with them has naturally been such that it 
could hardly have brought out the darker sides of human 
nature. During the last twenty years, however, I have 
had some excellent opportunities of watching a number 
of native scholars under circumstances where it is not 
difficult to detect a man's trae character — I mean in lit- 
erary work and, more particularly, in literary contro- 
versy. I have watched them carrying on such controver- 
sies both among themselves and with certain European 
scholars, and I feel bound to say that, with hardly one 
exception, they have displayed a far greater respect for 
truth and a far more manly and generous spirit than we 
are accustomed to even in Europe and America. They 
have shown strength, but no rudeness ; nay, I know that 
nothing has surprised them so much as the coarse invec- 
tive to which certain Sanskrit scholars have conde- 
scended, rudeness of speech being, according to tlieir 
view of human nature, a safe sign not only of bad breed- 
ing, but of want of knowledge. When they were 
wrong, they have readily admitted their mistakes ; when 
they were right, they have never sneered at their Euro- 

erally are able to read, write, and cipher ; but wheve we have swept 
away the village-system, as in Bengal, there the village-school has 
also disappeared." 



82 LECTUKE II. 

pean adversaries. There has been, with few exceptions, 
no quibbling, no special pleading, no nntrnthfnlness on 
their part, and certainly none of that low cunning of the 
scholar who writes down and publishes what he knows 
perfectly well to be false, and snaps his fingers at those 
who still value truth and self-respect more highly than 
victory or applause at any price. Here, too, we might 
possibly gain by the import cargo. 

Let me add that I have been repeatedly told by Eng- 
lish merchants that commercial honor stands higher in 
India than in any other country, and that a dishonored 
bill is hardly known there. 

I have left to the last the witnesses who might other- 
wise have been suspected — I mean the Hindus them- 
selves. The whole of their literature from one end to 
the other is pervaded by expressions of love and rever- 
ence for truth. Their very word for truth is full of 
meaning. It is s a t or s a t y a, s a t being the participle 
of the verb as^ to be. True, therefore, was with them 
simply that which is. The English sooth is connected 
with sat, also the Greek bv for ecrov, and the Latin sens, 
in prcBsens. 

We are all very apt to consider truth to be what is 
trowed by others, or believed in by large majorities. 
That kind of truth is easy to accept. But whoever has 
once stood alone, surrounded by noisy assertions, and 
overwhelmed by the clamor of those who ought to 
know better, or perhaps who did know better — call him 
Galileo or Darwin, Colenso or Stanley, or any other 
name — ho knows what a real delight it is to feel in his 
heart of hearts, this is true — this is — this is s a t — what- 
ever daily, weekly, or quarterly papers, whatever bish- 
ops, archbishops, or popes, may say to the contrary. 

Another name for truth is the Sanskrit r i t a, which 



TRUTHFUL' CHARACTER OF THE HIKDUS. 83 

originally seems to have meant straight^ direct^ while 
a n ^ z t a is untrue, false. 

Now one of the highest praises bestowed upon the 
gods in the Yeda is that they are satya, true, truthful, 
trustworthy ; '^ and it is well known that both in modern 
and ancient times, men always ascribe to God or to their 
gods those qualities which they value most in them- 
selves. 

Other words applied to the gods as truthful beings 
are, adrogha, lit. not deceiving. f Adrogha-va/j 
means, he whose word is never broken. Thus Indra, 
the Yedic Jupiter, is said to have been praised by the 
fathers :j: '' as reaching the enemy, overcoming him, 
standing on the summit, true of sj^eech, most powerful 
in thought." 

Droghava^,§ on the contrary, is used for deceitful 
men. Thus Yasish^^Aa, one of the great Yedic poets, 
says : '' If I had worshipped false gods, or if I believed 
in the gods vainly — but why art thou angry with us, O 
6^atavedas ? May liars go to destruction !" 

S a t y a m, as a neuter, is often used as an abstract, 
and is then rightly translated by truth. But it also 
means that which is, the true, the real ; and there are 
several passages in the Kig-\^eda where, instead of 
truth, I think we ought simply to translate satyam 
by the true, that is, the real, to ovrojg ov.l It sounds, 
no doubt, very well to translate Satyena uttabhita 
bhiimiA by " the earth is founded on truth ;" and I be- 
lieve every translator has taken satya in that sense 

* Rig-Yeda I. 87, 4 ; 145, 5 ; 174, 1 ; V. 23, L>. 
f Eig-Veda III. 32, 9 ; VI. 5, 1. 

X Eig-Veda VI. 22, 2. § lUg-Veda III. 14, 6. 

I This is the favorite expression of Plato for the Divine, which 
Gary, Davis, and others render " Eeal Being." — A. W. 



84 LECTURE If. 

here. Ludwig translates, " Yon der Wahrlieit ist die 
Erde gestiitzt." But such an idea, if it conveys any tan- 
gible meaning at all, is far too abstract for those early 
poets and philosophers. They meant to say '' the earth, 
such as we see it, is held up, that is, rests on something 
real, though we may not see it, on something which they 
called the Real,"^ and to which, in course of time, they 
gave many more names, such as Hit a, the right. 
Brahman," etc. 

Of course where there is that strong reverence for 
truth, there must also be the sense of guilt arising from 
untruth. And thus we hear one poet pray that the 
waters may wash him clean, and carry off all his sins 
and all untruth : 

'^ Carry away, ye waters, f whatever evil there is in 
me, wherever I may have deceived, or may have cursed, 
and also all untruth (anr^tam)." J 

Or again, in the Atharva-Yeda lY. 16 : 

'' May all thy fatal snares, which stand spread out 
seven by seven and threefold, catch the man who tells a 
lie, may they pass by him who tells the truth !" 

From the Brahma^ias, or theological treatises of the 
Brahmans, I shall quote a few passages only : 

'^ Whosoever § speaks the truth, makes the fire on his 

* Sometimes they trace even this Satya or Rito,, the Keal or 
Right, to a still higher cause, and say (Eig-Veda X. 190, 1) : 

" The Eight and Eeal was born from the Lighted Heat ; from 
thence was born Night, and thence the billowy sea. From the sea 
was born Sa?n,vatsara, the year, he who ordereth day and night, the 
Lord of all that moves (winks). The Maker (dhatri) shaped Sun and 
Moon in order ; he shaped the sky, the earth, the welkin, and the 
highest heaven." 

f Eig-Veda L 23, 22. 

ij: Or it may mean, " Wherever I may have deceived, or sworn 
false." § (Satapatha Br^hmana IL 2,3, 19. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 8o 

own altar blaze np, as if he poured butter into the 
lighted lire. His own light grows larger, and from to- 
morrow to to-morrow he becomes better. But who- 
soever speaks untruth, he quenches the fire on his altar, 
as if he poured water into the lighted fire ; his own light 
grows smaller and smaller, and from to-morrow to to- 
morrow he becomes more wicked. Let man therefore 
speak truth only." ^ 

And again : f ' ' A man becomes impure b j uttering 
falsehood. ' ' 

And again ::[:'' As a man who steps on the edge of a 
sword placed over a pit cries out, I shall slip, 1 shall slip 
into the pit, so let a man guard himself from falsehood 
(or sin)." 

In later times we see the respect for truth carried to 
such an extreme, that even a promise, unwittingly made, 
is considered to be binding. 

In the Kaz^Aa-Upanishad, for instance, a father is in- 
troduced offering what is called an _AZZ-sacrifice, where 
everything is supposed to be given up. His son, who is 
standing by, taunts his father with not having altogether 
fulfilled his vow, because he has not sacrificed his sou. 
Upon this, the father, though angry and against his will, 
is obliged to sacrifice his son. Again, when the son 
arrives in the lower world, he is allowed by the Judge 
of the Dead to ask for three favors. He then asks to be 
restored to life, to be taught some sacrificial mysteries, 
and, as the third boon, he asks to know what becomes of 
man after he is dead. Yama, the lord of the Departed, 
tries in vain to be let off from answering this last ques- 
tion. But he, too, is bound by his promise, and then 

* Cf. Muir, "Metrical Translations," p. 268. 

f S&t. Br. III. 1, 2, 10. t Taitt. Arajiyaka X. 9. 



86 LECTURE II. 

follows a discourse on life after death, or immortal life, 
which forms one of the most beautiful chapters in the 
ancient literature of India. 

The whole plot of one of the great epic poems, the 
RamayaTia, rests on a rash promise given by Da^aratha, 
king of Ajodhja, to his second wife, Kaikeyi, that he 
would grant her two boons. In order to secure the suc- 
cession to her own son, she asks that Rama, the eldest 
son by the king's other wife, should be banished for 
fourteen years. Much as the king repents his promise, 
Rama, his eldest son, would on no account let his father 
break his word, and he leaves his kingdom to wander in 
the forest with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshma^ia. 
After the father's death, the son of the second wife de- 
clines the throne, and comes to Rama to persuade him 
to accept the kingdom of his father. But all in vain. 
Rama will keep his exile for fourteen years, and never 
disown his father's promise. Here follows a curious 
dialogue between a Brahman (xabali and Prince Rama, 
of which I shall give some extracts : * 

'' The Brahman, who is a priest and courtier, says, 
' Well, descendant of Raghu, do not thou, so noble in 
sentiments, and austere in character, entertain, like a 
common man, this useless thought. What man is a 
kinsman of any other ? What relationship has any one 
with another ? A man is born alone and dies alone. 
Hence he who is attached to any one as his father or 
his mother, is to be regarded as if he were insane, for no 
one belongs to another. Thou oughtest not to aban- 
don thy father's kingdom and stay here in a sad and 
miserable abode, attended with many trials. Let thy- 
self be inaugurated king in the wealthy Ayodhya. 

* Muir, "Metrical Translations," p. 218. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 87 

Da^aratlia, thy father is nothing to thee, or thou to liini ; 
the king is one, and thou another, do therefore what is 
said. . . Then offer oblations to the departed spirits (of 
thy forefathers) on prescribed days ; but see what a 
waste of food ! For what can a dead man eat ? If 
what is eaten by one here enters into the body of another 
(viz., of the departed), let A^i'addhas be offered to those 
who are travelling ; they need not then get food to eat 
on their journey. These books (the Yedas), (which 
enjoin men to) sacrifice, give, consecrate themselves, 
practise austerities, and forsake the world, are composed 
by clever men to induce others to bestow gifts. Au- 
thoritative words do not fall from heaven. Let me, 
and others like yourselves, embrace whatever assertion is 
supported by reason. Adhere to what is apparent to the 
senses, and reject what is invisible. . . . TJiis world is 
the next world j do thou therefore enjoy pleasure, for 
every virtuous man does not gain it. Yirtuous men are 
greatly distressed, while the unrighteous are seen to be 
happy.' " > 

These positivist sentiments sound strange, particularly 
from the mouth of a Brahman. But the poet evidently 
wishes to represent a Brahman living at court, who has 
an argument ready for anything and everything that is 
likely to please his king. 

But what does Rama answer? "The words," he 
says, '^ which you have addressed to me, though they 
recommend what seems to be right and salutary, advise, 
in fact, the contrary. The sinful transgressor, who lives 
according to the rules of heretical systems, obtains no 
esteem from good men. It is good conduct that marks 
a man to be noble or ignoble, heroic or a pretender to 
manliness, pure or impure. Truth and mercy are im- 
memorial characteristics of a king's conduct. Hence 



88 LECTURE II. 

royal rule is in its essence truth. On truth the word 
is based. / Both sages and gods hav^e esteemed truth. 
'The man who speaks truth in this world attains the 
highest imperishable state. Men shrink with fear and 
horror from a liar as from a serpent. In this world the 
chief element in virtue is truth ; it is called the basis of 
everything. \ Truth is lord in the world ; virtue always 
rests on truth. All things are founded on truth ; noth- 
ing is higher than it. Why, then, should I not be true 
to my promise, and faithfully observe the truthful in- 
junction given by my father ? Neither through covet- 
ousness, nor delusion, nor ignorance, will I, overpowered 
by darkness, break through the barrier of truth, but 
remain true to my promise to my father. How shall 1, 
having promised to liim that 1 would thus reside in the 
forests, transgress his injunction, and do what Bharata 
recommends ?" 

The other epic poem too, the Mahabharata, is full of 
episodes showing a profound regard for truth and an al- 
most slavish submission to a pledge once given. The 
death of Bhishma, one of the most important events in 
the story of the Mahabharata, is due to his vow never to 
hurt a woman. He is thus killed by /Sikhandin, whom 
he takes to be a woman.* 

Were I to quote from all the law-books, and from still 
later works, everywhere you would hear the same key- 
note of truthfulness vibrating through them all. 

We must not, however, suppress the fact that, under 
certain circumstances, a lie was allowed, or, at all events, 
excused by Indian lawgivers. Thus Gautama says : f 
'' An untruth spoken by people under the influence of 

* Holtzmann, " Das alte indische Epos," p. 21, note 83. 
f V. 24. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OK THE HINDUS. 80 

anger, excessive joy, fear, pain, or grief, by infants, by 
very old men, by persons laboring under a delusion, 
being under the influence of drink, or by madmen, does 
not cause the speaker to fall, or, as we should say, is a 
venial, not a mortal sin." * 

This is a large admission, yet even in that open admis- 
sion there is a certain amount of honesty. Again and 
again in the Mahabharata is this excuse pleaded, f Nay, 
there is in the Mahabharata if the well-known story of 
Kau^ika, called Satyavadin, the Truth-speaker, who 
goes to hell for having spoken the truth. He once saw 
men flying into the forest before robbers (dasyu). The 
robbers came up soon after them, and asked Kau^ika, 
which way the fugitives had taken. He told them the 
ti*uth, and the men were caught by the robbers and 

* This permissioa to prevaricate was still further extended. The 
following five untruths are enumerated by various writers as not 
constituting mortal sins — namely, at the time of marriage, during 
dalliance, when life is in danger, when the loss of property is 
threatened, and for the sake of a Brahmawa. Again, another 
writer cites the declaration that an untruth is venial if it is 
spoken at the time of marriage, during dalliance, in jest, or while 
suflFering great pain. It is evident that Venus laughed at lovers' 
oaths in India as well as elsewhere ; and that false testimony ex- 
tracted by torture was excused. Manu declared that in some cases 
the giver of false evidence from a pious motive would not lose his 
seat in heaven ; indeed, that whenever the death of a man of any of 
the four castes would be occasioned by true evidence, falsehood was 
even better than truth. He gives as the primeval rule, to say what is 
true and what is pleasant, but not what is true and unpleasant, or 
what is pleasant and not true. The Vish?iu-purana gives like counsel, 
adding the following aphorism : '* A considerate man will always 
cultivate, in act, thought, and speech, that which is good for living 
beings, both in this world and in the next." About the same license 
appears to be used in this country and winked at. — A. W. 

f I. 3412 ; in. 13844 ; VII. 8742 ; VIII. 3436, 3464. 

i Mahabharata VHI. 3448. 



90 LECTURE II. 

killed. But KauAa, we are told, went to hell for 
having spoken the truth. 

The Hindus may seem to have been a priest-ridden 
race, and their devotion to sacrifice and ceremonial is 
well known. Yet this is what the poet of the Maha- 
bharata dares to say : 

" Let a thousand sacrifices (of a horse) and truth be 
weighed in the balance — truth will exceed the thousand 
sacrifices."* 

These are words addressed by xSakuntala, the deserted 
wife, to King Dushyanta, when he declined to recog- 
nize her and his son. And when he refuses to listen to 
her appeal, what does she appeal to as the highest au- 
thority ? — The voice of conscience. 

'^ If you think I am alone," she says to the king, 
'' you do not know that wise man within your heart. 
He knows of your evil deed — ^in his sight you commit 
sin. A man who has committed sin may think that no 
one knows it. The gods know it and the old man 
within." f 

This must suffice. 1 say once more that I do not wish 
to represent the people of India as two hundred and 
fifty-three millions of angels, but I do wish it to be 
understood and to be accepted as a fact, that the damag- 
ing charge of untruthfulness brought against that people 
is utterly unfounded with regard to ancient times. It is 
not only not true, but the very opposite of the truth. 
As to modern times, and I date them from about 1000 
after Christ, I can only say that, after reading the ac- 
counts of the terrors and horrors of Mohammedan rule, 
my wonder is that so much of native virtue and truth- 

* Muir, 1. c. p. 268 ; Mahabharata I. 3095. 
f Mahabharata I, 3015-16, 



TRUTHFUL CHAKACTER OF THE HIN'DUS. 91 

fulness should have survived. You might as well ex- 
pect a mouse to s]3eak the truth before a cat, as a 
Hindu before a Mohammedan judge. '^ If you frighten a 
child, that child will tell a lie ; if you terrorize millions, 
you must not be surprised if they try to escape from 
your fangs. Truthfulness is a luxury, perhaps the 
greatest, and let me assure you, the most expensive 
luxury in our life — and happy the man who has been 
able to enjoy it from his very childhood. It may be easy 
enough in our days and in a free country, like England, 
never to tell a lie — but the older we grow, the harder 
we find it to be always true, to speak the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The Hindus 
too had made that discovery. They too knew how hard, 
nay how impossible it is, always to speak the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is a 
short story in the /Satapatha Brahmawa, to my mind full 
of dee]3 meaning, and pervaded by the real sense of 
truth, the real sense of the difficulty of truth. His kins- 
man said to Aru7^a Aupave^i, " Thou art advanced in 
years, establish thou the sacrificial fires." He replied : 
" Thereby you tell me henceforth to keep silence. For 
he who has established the fires must not speak an un- 
truth, and only by not speaking at all, one speaks no 
untruth. To that extent the service of the sacrificial 
fires consists in truth." f 

I doubt whether in any other of the ancient literatures 
of the world you will find traces of that extreme sensi- 
tiveness of conscience which despairs of our ever speak- 
ing the truth, and which declares silence gold, and 

* This explains satisfactorily Jiow the Hindoos became liars, and 
of course admits that they did become so. — Am. Pubs, 

f (Satapatha Brahmana, translated by Eggeling, ** Sacred Books of 
the East," vol. xii., p. 313, § 20. 



92 LECTURE II. 

speeclr silver, tlioiigh in a much higher sense than onr 
j3roverb. 

What I should wish to impress on those who will soon 
find themselves the rulers of millions of human beings in 
India, is the duty to shake off national prejudices, which 
are apt to degenerate into a kind of madness. I have 
known people with a brown skin whom I could look up 
to as my betters. Look for them in India, and you will 
find them, and if you meet with disappointments, as no 
doubt you will, think of the people with white skins 
whom you have trusted, and whom you can trust no 
more. "We are all apt to be Pharisees in international 
judgments. I read only a few days ago in a pamphlet 
written by an enlightened politician, the following words : 

'^ Experience only can teach that nothing is so truly 
astonishing to a morally depraved people as the phenom- 
enon of a race of men in whose word perfect confi- 
dence may be placed '^. . . , The natives are conscious 
of their inferiority in nothing so much as in this. They 
require to be taught rectitude of conduct much more 
than literature and science." 

If you a]3proacli the Hindus with such feelings, you 
will teach them neither rectitude, nor science, nor liter- 
ature. Na}^, they might appeal to their own literature, 
even to their law-books, to teach us at least one lesson of 
truthfulness, truthfulness to om'selves, or, in other words, 
humility. 

What does ya^;'zavalkya say ? f 

'' It is not our hermitage," he says — our rehgion we 
might say — '^ still less the color of our skin, that pro- 
duces virtue ; virtue must be practiced. Therefore let 

* Sir Charles Trevelyan, " Christianity and Hinduism," p. 81, 
t IV. 65, 



TBtrTHFtJL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 93 

no one do to others what he would not have done to 
himself." 

And the laws of the Manavas, which were so much 
abused by Mill, what do they teach ? * 

" Evil-doers think indeed that no one sees them ; but 
the gods see them, and the old man within." 

'^ Self is the witness of Self, Self is the refuge of Self. 
Do not despise thy own Self, the highest witness of 
men." f 

^' If, friend, thou thinkest thou art self -alone, re- 
member there is the silent thinker (the Highest Self) 
always within thy heart, and he sees what is good and 
what is evil. " :j: 

'^ O friend, whatever good thou may est have done 
from thy very birth, all will go to the dogs, if thou 
speak an untruth." 

Or in Yasishz^Aa, XXX. 1 : 

^' Practice righteousness, not unrighteousness ; speak 
truth, not untruth ; look far, not near ; look up toward 
the highest, not toward anything low." 

'No doubt there is moral depravity in India, and 
where is there no moral depravity in this world ? But 
to appeal to international statistics w^ould be, I believe, a 
dangerous game. 'Nor must w^e forget that our stand- 
ards of morality differ, and, on some points, differ con- 
siderably from those recognized in India ; and we must 
not wonder if sons do not at once condemn as criminal 
what their fathers and grandfathers considered right. 
Let us hold by all means to our sense of what is right 
and what is wrong ; but in judging others, whether in 
public or in private life, w^hether as historians or politi- 
cians, let us not forget that a kindly spirit will never do 

* VIII. 85. t Vm. 90. t VIII. 92. 



94 LECTURE II. 

any harm. Certainly I can imagine nothing more mis- 
chievous, more dangerous, more fatal to the permanence 
of English rule in India, than for the young civil ser- 
vants to go to that country with the idea that it is a sink 
of moral depravity, an ants' nest of lies ; for no one is so 
sure to go wrong, whether in public or in private life, as 
he who says in his haste : '' All men are liars." 



LECTUEE III. 

HUMAN IIS^TEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 

My first lecture was intended to remove the prejudice 
that India is and always must be a strange country to 
us, and that those who have to live there will find them- 
selves stranded, and far away from that living stream of 
thoughts and interests which carries us along in England 
and in other countries of Europe. 

My second lecture was directed against another prej- 
udice, namely, that the people of India with whom the 
young civil servants will have to pass the best years of 
their life are a race so depraved morally, and more par- 
ticularly so devoid of any regard for truth, that they 
must always remain strangers to us, and that any real 
fellowship or friendship with them is quite out of the 
question. 

To-day I shall have to grapple with a third prejudice, 
namely, that the literature of India, and more especially 
the classical Sanskrit literature, whatever may be its in- 
terest to the scholar and the antiquarian, has little to 
teach us which we cannot learn better from other 
sources, and that at all events it is of little practical use 
to young civilians. If only they learn to express them- 
selves in Hindustani or Tamil, that is considered quite 
enough ; nay, as they have to deal with men and with 
the ordinary affairs of life, and as, before everything 
else, they are to be men of the world and men of busi- 
ness, it is even supposed to be dangerous, if they allowed 



96 LECTURE III. 

tliemselves to become absorbed in questions of abstruse 
scholarship or in researches on ancient rehgion, mythol- 
ogy, and philosophy. 

I take the very opposite opinion, and I should advise 
every young man who wishes to enjoy his life in India, 
and to spend his years there with profit to himself and 
to others, to learn Sanskrit, and to learn it well. 

I know it will be said. What can be the use of San- 
skrit at the present day ? Is not Sanskrit a dead lan- 
guage ? And are not the Hindus themselves ashamed 
of their ancient literature ? Do they not learn English, 
and do they not prefer Locke, and Hume, and Mill to 
their ancient poets and philosophers ? 

No doubt Sanskrit, in one sense, is a dead language. 
It was, I believe, a dead language more than two thou- 
sand years ago. Buddha, about 500 e.g., commanded his 
disciples to preach in the dialects of the people ; and 
King A,9oka, in the third century e.g., when he put up 
his Edicts, which were intended to be read, or at least 
to be understood by the people, had them engraved on 
rocks and pillars in the various local dialects from Cabul * 
in the north to Ballabhi in the south, from the sources 
of the Granges and the Jumnah to Allahabad and Patna, 
nay even down to Orissa. These various dialects are as 
different from Sanskrit as Italian is from Latin, and we 
have therefore good reason to suppose that, in the third 
century e.g., if not earlier, Sanskrit had ceased to be the 
spoken language of the people at large. 

There is an interesting passage in the Alillavagga, 
where we are told that, even during Buddha's lifetime, 
some of his pupils, who were Brahmans by birth, com- 

* See Cunningham, " Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum," vol. i., 

1877. 



HUMAK INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 97 

plained that people spoiled tlie words of Buddha by 
every one repeating them in his own dialect (nirutti). 
They proposed to translate his words into Sanskrit ; but 
he dechned, and connnanded that each man should learn 
his doctrine in his own language.^ 

And there is another passage, quoted by Hardy in his 
Manual of Buddhism, p. 186, where we read that at the 
time of Buddha's first preaching each of the countless 
listeners thought that the sage was looking toward him, 
and was speaking to him in his own tongue, though the 
language used w^as Magadhi.f 

Sanskrit, therefore, as a language spoken by the 
people at large, had ceased to exist in the third century 

B.C. 

Yet such is the marvellous continuity between the X3ast 
and tlie present in India, that in spite of repeated social 
convulsions, religious reforms, and foreign invasions, 
Sanskrit may be said to be still the only language that is 
spoken over the whole extent of that vast country. 

Though the Buddhist sovereigns published their 
edicts in the vernaculars, public inscriptions and private 
official documents continued to be composed in Sanskrit 
during the last two thousand years. And though the 
language of the sacred writings of Buddhists and 6^ainas 
was borrowed from the vulgar dialects, the literature of 
India never ceased to be written in Pamnean Sanskrit, 
while the few exceptions, as, for instance, the use of 
Prakrit by women and inferior characters in the plays 
of Kalidasa and others, are themselves not without an 
important historical significance. 

* -KuUavagga V. 33, 1. The expression used is ^/iandaso arope- 
ma'ti. 

f See Bhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, " Sacred Books of the East," 
Yol. xi., p. 142, 



98 LECTURE III. 

Even at the present moment, after a century of Eng- 
lish rule and English teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is 
more widely understood in India than Latin was in 
Europe at the time of Dante. 

Whenever I receive a letter from a learned man. in 
India, it is written in Sanskrit. Whenever there is a 
controversy on questions of law and religion, the pam- 
phlets published in India are written in Sanskrit. There 
are journals written in Sanskrit which must entirely 
depend for their support on readers who prefer that 
classical language to the vulgar dialects. There is The 
Pandit^ published at Benares, containing not only edi- 
tions of ancient texts, but treatises on modern subjects, 
reviews of books published in England, and con troy ersial 
articles, all in Sanskrit. 

Another paper of the same kind is the Pratna-iKam- 
ra-ncmdinij '^ the Delight of lovers of old things," pub- 
lished likewise at Benares, and full of valuable materials. 

There is also the Yidyodaya^ ' ^ the Kise of Knowl- 
edge," a Sanskrit journal published at Calcutta, which 
sometimes contains important articles. There are prob- 
ably others, which I do not know. 

There is a monthly serial published at Bombay, by 
M. Moreshwar Kunte, called the Shad-darshana-Chin- 
tanihd^ or '^ Studies in Indian Philosophy," giving the 
text of the ancient systems of philosophy, with commen- 
taries and treatises, written in Sanskrit, though in this 
case accompanied by a Marathi and an English transla- 
tion. 

Of the Rig-Yeda, the most ancient of Sanskrit books, 
two editions are now coming out in monthly numbers, 
the one published at Bombay, by what may be called the 
liberal party, the other at Prayaga (Allahabad) by Daya- 
nanda Sarasvati, the representative of Indian orthodoxy. 



HUMAN IlfTEKEST OF SAi^SKRTT LITERATURE. 99 

The former gives a paraphrase in Sanskrit, and a 
Marathi and an English translation ; the latter a fuljl ex- 
planation in Sanskrit, followed bj a vernacular con?Vnen- 
tary. These books are published by subscription, and 
the list of subscribers among the natives of India is very 
considerable. 

There are other journals, which are cliieily written in 
the spoken dialects, such as Bengali, Marathi, or Hindi ; 
Imt they contain occasional articles in Sanskrit;., as, for 
instance, the Hari^^andra^andrika, pubHshed at Benares, 
the Tattvabodhini^ published at Calcutta, and several 
more. 

It was only the other day that I saw in the Liberal^ 
the journal of Keshub Chunder Sen's yjarty,* an account 
of a meeting between Brahmavrata Samadhyayi, a Yedic 
scholar of l^uddea, and Kashinath Trinibak Telang, a 
M.A. of the University of Bombay. The one came 
from the east, the other from the w^est, yet both could 
converse fluently in Sanskrit, f 

Still more extraordinary is the number of Sanskrit 
texts, issuing from native presses, for which there seems 
to be a large demand, for if we write for copies to be 
sent to England, we often find that, after a year or two, 
all the copies have been bought up in India itself. 
That would not be the case with Anglo-Saxon texts in 
England, or with Latin texts in Italy ! 

But more than this, we are told that the ancient epic 
poems of the Mahabharata and Kamaya^a are still 
recited in the temples for the benefit of visitors, and that 
in the villages large crowds assemble around the 
Kathaka, the reader of these ancient Sanskrit poems, 

* The Brahmo-Samaj, a theistic school.— A. W. 

f The Lxh^ral March 12, 1882. 



\ 



IGO LECTURE III. 

often interrupting his recitations witk tear§ and sighSj 
when the hero of the poem is sent into banishment, 
while/ Fhen he returns to his kingdom,, the houses of the 
village are adorned with lamps and garlands. Such a 
recitation of the whole of the IViahabharata is said to 
occupy ninety days, or sometimes half a year.^ The 
people at large require, no doubt, that the Brahman 
narrator (Kathaka) should interpret the old poem, but 
there must be some few people present who understand, 
or imagine they understand, the old poetry of Yyasa 
and Yalmiki. 

There are thousands of Brahmans f even now, when so 
little inducement exists for Yedic studies, who know the 
whole of the Big- Yeda by heart and can repeat it ; and 
what applies to the Big-Yeda applies to many other 
books. 1 

But e^en if Sanskrit were m.ore of a dead language 
than it really is, all the living languages of India, both 
Aryan and Dravidian, draw their very life and soul from 
Sanskrit.:}: On this point, and on the great help that 
even a limited knowledge of Sanskrit would render in 

* See R. G. Bhandarkar, Consideration of the date of the Maha- 
bharata, Journal of the R. A. 8. of Boinbay, 1872 ; Talboys Wheeler, 
" History of India," ii. 365, 572 ; Holtzmann, " Tiber das alte in- 
dische Epos," 1881, p. 1 ; Phear, " The Aryan Village in India and 
Ceylon," p. 19. That the Mahabharata was publicly read in the 
seventh century a.d., we learn from Bana ; see Journal of the Royal 
Asiatic Society, Bombay, yoI. x., p. 87, note. — A. W. 

f " Hibbert Lectures," p. 157. 

\ " Every person acquainted with the spoken speech of India 
knows perfectly well that its elevation to the dignity and usefulness 
of written speech has depended, and must still depend, upon its 
borrowing largely from its parent or kindred source ; that no man 
who is ignorant of Arabic or Sanskrit can write Hindustani or 
Bengali with elegance, or purity, or precision, and that the con- 
demnation of the classical languages to oblivion would consign the 



HUMAK IKTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 101 

the acquisition of the vernaculars, I, and others better 
qualified than 1 am, have spoken so often, though with- 
out any practical effect, that I need not speak /again. 
Any candidate who knows but the elements of Sanskrit 
grammar will v/ell understand what I mean, whether his 
special vernacular may be Bengali, Hindustani, or even 
Tamil. To a classical scholar I can only say that 
between a civil servant who knows Sanskrit and Hin- 
dustani, and another who knows Hindustani only, 
there is about the same difference in their power of 
forming an intelligent appreciation of India and its in- 
habitants, as there is between a traveller who visits Italy 
with a knowledge of Latin, and a party personally con- 
ducted to Rome by Messrs. Cook & Co. 

Let us examine, however, the objection that Sanskrit 
literature is a dead or an artificial literature, a little more 
carefully, in order to see whether there is not some kind 
of truth in it. Some people hold that the literary works 
which we possess in Sanskrit never had any real life at 
all, that they were altogether scholastic productions, and 
that therefore they can teach us nothing of what we 
really care for, namely, the historical growth of the 
Hindu mind. Others maintain that at the present 
moment, at all events, and after a century of English 
rule, Sanskrit Kterature has ceased to be a motive power 
in India, and that it can teach us nothing of what is 
passing now through the Hindu mind and influencing it 
for good or for evil. 

Let us look at the facts. Sanskrit literature is a wide 
and a vague term. If the Yedas, such as we now have 
them, were composed about 1500 e.g., and if it is a fact 
that considerable works continue to be written in San- 
dialects to utter helplessness and iri'etrievable barbarism." — H, H^ 
Wilson, Asiatic Journal, Jan., 1836 ; vol xix., p. 15. 



103 LECTURE III. 

skrit even now, we have before us a stream of literarj 
activity extending over three thousand four hundred 
jears^^f , With the exception of China there is nothing 
like this in the whole world. 

It is difficult to give an idea of the enormous extent 
and variety of that literature. We are only gradually 
becoming acquainted with the untold treasures which still 
exist in manuscripts, and with the titles of that still 
larger number of works which nmst have existed 
formerly, some of them being still quoted by writers of 
the last three or four centuries- "^ 

The Indian Government has of late years ordered a 
kind of bibliographical survey of India to be made, and 
has sent some learned Sanskrit scholars, both European 
and native, to places where collections of Sanskrit mss. 
are known t^ exist, in order to examine and catalogue 
them. Some of these catalogues have been published, 
and we learn from them that the number of separate 
works in Sanskrit, of which mss. are still in existence, 
amounts to about 10,000. f This is more, I believe, 
than the whole classical literature of Greece and Italy 
put together. Much of it, no doubt, will be called mere 
rubbish ; but then you know that even in our days the 
writings of a very eminent philosopher have been called 
'^ mere rubbish." What I wish you to see is this, that 
there runs through the whole history of India, through 
its three or four thousand years, a liigh road, or, it is 
perhaps more accurate to say, a high mountain-path of 
literature. It may be remote from the turmoil of the 
plain, hardly visible perhaps to the millions of human 

* It woTild be a most useful work for any young scholar to draw 
up a list of Sanskrit books which are quoted by later waiters, but 
have not yet been met with in Indian libraries. 

f " Hibbert Lectures/' p. 133. 



HUMAJq" INTEREST OF SAiq'SKRIT LITERATURE. 103 

beings in their daily struggle of life. It may have been 
trodden by a few solitary wanderers only. But to the 
historian of the human race, to the student of the ^de- 
velopment of the human mind, those few sohtary wan- 
derers are after all the true representatives of India from 
age to age. Do not let us be deceived. The true his- 
tory of the world must always be the history of the few ; 
and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount 
Everest, we must take the true measure of India from 
the poets of the Yeda, the sages of the Upanishads, the 
founders of the Yedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and 
the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the 
millions who are born and die in their villages, and who 
have never for one moment been roused out of their 
drowsy dream of life. 

To large multitudes in India, no doubt, Sanskrit lit- 
erature was not merely a dead literature, it was simply 
non-existent ; but the same might be said of almost 
every literature, and more particularly of the literatures 
of the ancient world. 

Still, even beyond this, I am quite prepared to ac- 
knowledge to a certain extent the truth of the statement, 
that a great portion of Sanskrit literature has never been 
living and national, in the same sense in which the Greek 
and Roman literatures reflected at times the life of a 
whole nation ; and it is quite true besides, that the San- 
skrit books which are best known to the public at large, 
belong to what might correctly be called the Renaissance 
period of Indian literature, when those who wrote San- 
slvrit had themselves to learn the language, as we learn 
Latin, and were conscious that they were writing for a 
learned and cultivated public only, and not for the 
people at large. 

This will require a fuller explanation. 



104 LECTURE III. 

We may divide tlie whole of Sanskrit literature, 
beginning with the Rig-Yeda and ending with Daya- 
nanda's Introduction to his edition of the E-ig-Yeda, his 
by no means uninteresting Kig-Yeda-bhumika, into two 
great periods : that preceding the great Turanian inva- 
sion, and that following it. 

The former comprises the Yedic literature and the 
ancient Hterature of Buddhism, the latter all the 
rest. 

If I call the invasion which is generally called the in- 
vasion of the xSakas, or the Scythians, or Indo-Scythians, 
or Turushkas, the Turanian * invasion^ it is simply be- 
cause I do not as yet wish to commit myself more than I 
can help as to the nationality of the tribes who took pos- 
session of India, or, at least, of the government of India, 
from about the first century e.g. to the third century 

A.D. 

They are best known by the name of Y^ueh-chi, this 
being the name by which they are called in Chinese 
chronicles. These Chinese chronicles form the principal 
source from which ^re derive our knowledge of these 
tribes, both before and after their invasion of India. 
Many theories have been started as to their relationship 
with other races. They are described as of pink and 
white complexion and as shooting from horseback ; and 
as there was some similarity between their Chinese name 
Yueh-chi and the Gothi or Goths, they were identified 
by Remusat f with those German tribes, and by others 
with the Getae, the neighbors of the Goths. Tod went 
even a step farther, and traced the (xats in India and the 

* This vague term, Turanian, so much used in the Parsi Scriptures, 
is used here in the sense of unclassified ethnically. — A. W. 

f " Eecherches sur les langues Tartares," 1820, vol. i., p, 327 ; 
f' Lassen," 1. A., vol. ii., p. 359, 



HUMAK IKTEKEST OE SAN^SKRIT tITERATURE. 105 

Rajputs back to the Yxieh-chi and Getce.'^ Some light 
maj come in time out of all this darkness, but for the 
present we must be satisfied with the fact that, between 
the first century before and the third century after our 
era, the greatest political revolution took place in India 
owing to the repeated inroads of Turanian, or, to use a 
still less objectionable term, of Northern tribes. Their 
presence in India, recorded by Chinese historians, is 
fully confirmed by coins, by inscriptions, and by the tra- 
ditional history of the country, such as it is ; but to my 
mind nothing attests the presence of these foreign in- 
vaders more clearly than the break, or, I could almost 
say, the blank in the Brahmanical literature of India, 
from the first century before to the third century after 
our era.f 

If we consider the political and social state of that 
country, we can easily understand what would happen in 
a case of invasion and conquest by a warlike race. The 
invaders would take possession of the strongholds or cas- 
tles, and either remove the old Eajahs, or make them 

* Lassen, who at first rejected the identification of G'ats and Yueh- 
chi, was afterward inclined to accept it. 

f The Yueh-chi appear to have begun their invasion about 130 b.c. 
At this period the Grecian kingdom of Bactria, after a brilliant exist- 
ence of a century, had fallen before the Tochari, a Scythian people. 
The new invaders, called 'E<pBa7uTai by the Greeks, had been driven 
out of their old abodes and now occupied the countrj^ lying between 
Parthia at the west, the Oxus and Surkhab, and extending into Little 
Thibet. They were herdsmen and nomads. At this time India was 
governed by the descendants of Asoka, the great propagandist of 
Buddhism. About twenty years before the Christian era, or prob- 
ably earlier, the Yueh-chi, under Karranos, crossed the Indus and 
conquered the country, which remained subject to them for three 
centuries. The Chinese historians Sze-ma Tsien and Han-yo, give 
these accounts, which are however confirmed by numismatic and 
other evidence. — A. W. 



106 LECTURE III. 

their vassals and agents. Everything else would then go 
on exactly as before. The rents would be paid, the 
taxes collected, and the life of the villagers, that is, of 
the great majority of the people of India, would go on 
almost undisturbed by the change of government. The 
only people who might suffer would be, or, at all events, 
might be the priestly caste, unless they should come to 
terms with the new conquerors. The priestly caste, 
however, was also to a great extent the literary caste, 
and the absence of their old patrons, the native Rajahs, 
might well produce for a time a complete cessation of 
literary activity. The rise of Buddhism and its formal 
adoption by King Asoka had already considerably shaken 
the power and influence of the old Brahmanic hierarchy. 
The Northern conquerors, whatever their religion may 
have been, were certainly not believers in the Yeda. 
They seem to have made a kind of compromise with 
Buddhism, and it is probably due to that compromise, or 
to an amalgamation of Saksi legends with Buddhist doc- 
trines, that we owe the so-called Mahayana form of 
Buddhism — and more particularly the Amitabha worship 
— which was finally settled at the Council under Kan- 
ishka, one of the Turanian rulers of India in the first 
century a.d. 

If then we divide the whole of Sanskrit literature into 
these two periods, the one anterior to the great Turanian 
invasion, the other posterior to it, we may call the liter- 
ature of the former period ancient and natural^ that of 
the latter 'modern and artificial. 

Of the former period we possess, finrst^ what has been 
called the Yeda. i.e., Knowledge, in the widest sense of 
the word-— a considerable mass of literature, yet evi- 
dently a wreck only, saved out of a general deluge ; 
secondly, the works collected in the Buddhist Tripi^aka, 



HUMAIf INTEREST O^ SAiq"SKEIT LITERATURE. 107 

now known to us chiefly in what is called the Pali dia- 
lect, the Gatha dialects, and Sanskrit, and probably 
much added to in later times. 

The second period of Sanskrit literature comprehends 
everything else. Both, periods may be subdivided again, 
but this does not concern us at present. 

Now I am quite willing to admit that the literature of 
the second period, the modem Sanskrit literature, never 
was a living or national literature. It here and there 
contains remnants of earlier times, adapted to the liter- 
ary, religious, and moral tastes of a later period ; and 
whenever we are able to disentangle those ancient ele- 
ments, they may serve to throw light on the past, and, 
to a certain extent, supplement what has been lost in the 
literature of the Yedic times. The metrical Law-books, 
for instance, contain old materials which existed during 
the Yedic period, partly in prose, as Sutras, partly in 
more ancient metres, as Gathas. The Epic poems, the 
Mahabharata and Rdmaya^a, have taken the place of the 
old Itihasas and Akhyanas. The Pura^ias, even, may 
contain materials, though much altered, of what was 
called in Yedic literature the Pura^a."^ 

But the great mass of that later literature is artificial 
or scholastic, full of interesting compositions, and by no 
means devoid of originality and occasional beauty ; yet 
with all that, curious only, and appealing to the interests 
of the Oriental scholar far more than the broad human 
sympathies of the historian and the philosopher. 

It is different with the ancient literature of India, the 
literature dominated by the Yedic and the Buddhistic 
religions. That literature opens to us a chapter in what 
has been called the Education of the Human Race, to 

* ** Hibbert Lectures," p. 154, note. 



108 LECTURE III. 

which we can find no parallel anywhere else. Whoever 
cares for the historical growth of our language, that is, 
of our thoughts ; whoever cares for the first intelligible 
development of religion and mythology ; whoever cares 
for the first foundation of what in later times we call the 
sciences of astronomy, metronomy, grammar, and ety- 
mology ; whoever cares for the first intimations of phil- 
osophical thought, for the first attempts at regulating 
family life, village life, and state life, as founded on 
religion, ceremonial, tradition and contract (samaya) — 
must in future pay the same attention to the literature 
of the Yedic period as to the literatures of Greece and 
Rome and Germany. 

As to the lessons which the early literature of Bud- 
dhism may teach us, I need not dwell on them at present. 
If 1 may judge from the numerous questions that are 
addressed to me with regard to that religion and its 
striking coincidences with Christianity, Buddhism has 
already become a subject of general interest, and will 
and ought to become so more and more.* On that 

^ In June, 1882, a Conference on Buddhism was held at Sion Col- 
lege, to discuss the real or apparent coincidences between the 
religions of Buddha and Christ. Professor Miiller addressed two 
letters to the secretary, which were afterward published, declaring 
such a discussion in general terms almost an impossibility. " The 
name of Buddhism," he says, " is applied to religious opinions, not 
only of the most varying, but of a decidedly opposite character, held 
by people on the highest and lowest stages of civilization, divided 
into endless sects, nay, founded on two distinct codes of canonical 
writings." Two Buddhist priests who were reading Sanskrit with 
him would hardly recognize the Buddhism now practiced in Ceylon 
as their own religion. 

He also acknowledged the startling coincidences between Bud- 
dhism and Christianity, and that Buddhism existed at least 400 years 
before Christianity. He would go farther, and feel extremely grateful 
if anybody would point out to him the historical channels through 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 109 

whole class of literature, however, it is not my intention 
to dwell in this short course of Lectures, which can 
hardly suffice even for a general survey of Yedic litera- 
ture, and for an elucidation of the principal lessons 
which, I tliink, we may learn from the Hymns, the 
Brahma^ias, the Upanishads, and the Sutras. 

It was a real misfortune that Sanskrit literature 
became first known to the learned public in Europe 
through specimens belonging to the second, or, what I 

which Buddhism had influenced early Christianity. " I have been 
looking for such channels all my hfe," says he, " but hitherto I have 
found none. What I have found is that for some of the most start- 
ling coincidences there are historical antecedents on both sides ; and 
if we knew these antecedients, the coincidences become far less 
startling. If I do find in certain Buddhist works doctrines iden- 
tically the same as in Christianity, so far from being frightened, I 
feel delighted, for surely truth is not the less true because it is 
believed by the majority of the human race. 

" I believe we have made some progress during the last thirty 
years. I still remember the time when all heathen religions were 
looked upon as the work of the devil.* We know now that they are 
stages in a growth, aad in a growth not determined by an accidental 
environment only, but by an original purpose, a purpose to be 
realized in the history of the human race as a whole. Even mission- 
aries have begun to approach the heathen in a new and better spirit. 
They look for what may safely be preserved in the religion of their 
pupils, and on that common ground they try to erect a purer faith 
and a better worship, instead of attempting to destroy the sacred 
foundations of religion, which, I believe, exist, or at least, existed, 
in every human heart. ' ' 

He also states that the publishing of the " Kig-Veda and Com- 
mentary," his life-work, had produced a complete revolution both 
in our views of ancient religions and in the religious life of the 
Hindus themselves ; and this not so much on the surface as in its 
deepest foundations. — A. W. 

* Wc have no knowledge of euch a belief. The common Christian theory is that 
Christianity is as ohl as the garden of Eden, and that truth in other religions is the 
rcBult of contact, somewhere, at some time, with Christianity.- Am. Pubs. 



110 LECTURE III. 

called, the Renaissance period. The Bhagavadgita, the 
plays of Kalidasa, such as /t^akuntala or Urva^i, a few 
episodes from the Mahabharata and KamayaTia, such as 
those of Nala and the Ya^Tzadattabadha, the fables of 
the Hitopade,§a, and the sentences of BhartWhari are, no 
doubt, extremely curious ; and as, at the time when they 
first became known in Europe, they were represented to 
be of extreme antiquity, and the work of a people for- 
merly supposed to be quite incapable of high Kterary 
efforts, they naturally attracted the attention of men 
such as Sir William Jones in England, Herder and 
Goethe in Germany, who were pleased to speak of them 
in terms of highest admiration. It was the fashion at 
that time to speak of Kalidasa, as, for instance, Alexan- 
der von Humboldt did even in so recent a work as his 
Kosmos, as '^ the great contemporary of Yirgil and Hor- 
ace, who lived at the splendid court of Yikramaditya,' ' 
this Yikramaditya being supposed to be the founder of 
the Sam vat era, 56 b.c. But all this is now changed. 
"Whoever the Yikramaditya was who is supposed to have 
defeated the /S'akas, and to have founded another era, 
the Sam vat era, 56 e.g., he certainly did not live in the 
first century e.g. Nor are the Indians looked upon any 
longer as an illiterate race, and their poetry as popular 
and artless. On the contrary, they are judged now by 
the same standards as Persians and Arabs, Italians or 
French ; and, measured by that standard, such works as 
Kalidasa's plays are not superior to many plays that have 
long been allowed to rest in dust and peace on the 
shelves of our libraries. Their antiquity is no longer 
believed in by any critical Sanskrit scholar. Kahdasa is 
mentioned with Bharavi as a famous poet in an inscrip- 
tion ^ dated a.d. 585-6 (507 /Saka era), and for the 

* Published by Fleet in the" Indian Antiquary," 1876, pp. 68-73, 



HITMAK INTEREST OF SAKSKRIT LITERATURE. Ill 

present I see no reason to place him inucli earlier. As 
to the Laws of Mann, which used to be assigned to a 
fabulous antiqnity,* and are so still sometimes by those 
who write at random or at second-hand, I doubt whether, 
in their present form, they can be older than the fourth 
century of our era, nay I. am quite prepared to see an 
even later date assigned to them. 1 know this will seem 
heresy to many Sanskrit scholars, bat v/e must try to be 
honest to ourselves. Is there any evidence to constrain 
us to assign the Manava-dharma-^astra, such as we now 
possess it, written in continuous /S'lokas, to any date 
anterior to 300 a.d. ? And if there is not, why should 
we not openly state it, challenge opposition, and feel 
grateful if our doubts can be removed ? 

That Manu was a name of high legal authority before 
that time, and that Manu and the Manavam are fre- 
quently quoted in the ancient legal Sutras, is quite true ; 
but this serves only to confirm the conviction that the 
literature which succeeded the Turanian invasion is full 
of wrecks saved from the intervening deluge. If what 
we call the Lav^s of Mam,u had really existed as a code 
of laws, like the Code of Justinian, during previous 
centuries, is it likely that it should nowhere have been 
quoted and appealed to ? 

Yarahamihira (who died 687 a.d.) refers to Manu sev- 
eral times, but not to a Manava-dharma-^astra ; and the 
only time where he seems actually to quote a number of 
verses from Manu, these verses are not to be met witli in 
our text.f 

and first mentioned by Dr. Bhao Daji, Journal Asiatic Society, Bom- 
bay Branch, vol. ix. 

-^ Sir William Jones fixed their date at 1280 e.g. ; Elphinstone as 
900 B.C. It has recently been stated that they could not reasonably 
be placed later than the fifth century b,c. 

t A very useful indication of the age of th« Dharma-sutras^ as com- 



112. LECTURE III! 

I believe it will be found that the century in which 
Yarahamihara lived and wrote was the age of the lit'er- 
ary Renaissance in India. "^ That Kalidasa and Bharavi 



pared with the metrical Dharma-sastras or Samhitas, is to be found 
in the presence or absence in them of any reference to written 
documents. Such written documents, if they existed, could hardly 
be passed over in silence in law-books, particularly when the nature 
of witnesses is discussed in support of loans, pledges, etc. Now, 
we see that in treating of the law of debt and debtors, * the Dharma- 
sutras of Gautama, Baudhayana, and Apastamba never mention 
evidence in writing. VasishZ/ia only refers to written evidence, but 
in a passage which may be interpolated, f considering that in other 
respects his treatment of the law of debt is very crude. Manu's 
metrical code shows here again its usual character. It is evidently 
based on ancient originals, and when it simply reproduces them, 
gives us the impression of great antiquity. But it freely admits 
more modern ingredients, and does so in our case. It speaks of 
witnesses, fixes their minimum number at three, and discusses very 
minutely their qualifications and disqualifications, without saying a 
word about written documents. But in one place (VIII. 168) it 
speaks of the valuelessness of written agreements obtained by force, 
thus recognizing the practical employment of writing for commercial 
transactions. Professor Jolly, ;}: it is true, suggests that this verse may 
be a later addition, particularly as it occurs totidem verbis in Narada 
(IV. 55) ; but the final composition of Manu's Samhita, such as we 
possess it, can hardly be referred to a period when writing was not 
yet used, at all events for commercial purposes. Manu's " Law- 
book" is older than Yag^a-valkya's, in which writing has become a 
familiar subject. Vishnu often agreeis literally with Yagfla-valkya, 
v,^hile Narada, as showing the fullest development of the law of debt, 
is most likely the latest.^ 

See Brihatsamhita, ed. Kern, pref., p. 43 ; Journal of the R. A. 8., 
1875, p. 106. 

* Professor Mtiller rejects the theory of the Samvat era and the 
Renaissance of Sanskrit literature in the first century. Instead, he 



* "Tiber das Indiscbe Schuldrecht von J. Jolly," p. 291. 

t Jolly, 1. c, p. 322. $L. c.,p. 290. 

§ Jolly, 1 c , p. 322. He places Katyayana and Brihaspati after Narada, possibly 
Yyasa aad Hdrica also. See also Stenzler, Z. d D. M. G. ix. 664. 



HUMAN" Il^TTEREST OE SAKSKiUT LIIERATURE. 113 

were famous at that time, we know from the evidence 
of inscriptions. We also know that during that century 
the fame of Indian hterature had reached Persia, and 



acknowledges the existence of a ;S'aka era, bearing date with the 
coronation of Kanishka, 78 a.d. Although this n-onarch was a patron 
of the Buddhists, and the third collection of their sacred books was 
made under his auspices, our author considers the period of 5aka or 
Yuen-chi domination from 24 b.c. till 178 a.d. as a literary' inter- 
regnum. He is not willing to suggest any date for the Mahabharata 
or Ramayana, which appear to have been then extant. He exoner- 
ates Indian epic poetry, however, from any imputation of Greek 
influence. Not so with astronomy. Aryabhaia, the elder, who 
described the motion of the earth very accurately, he considers to 
have had no predecessors ; and also cites other Indian authors who 
described the twelve signs of the zodiac with Greek names or their 
equivalents, and assigned each to a region in the body of the Crea- 
tor, as we now see it marked out in our almanacs. In this matter 
he is certainly plausible. 

The period of the Eenaissance and the reign and proper era of 
Vikramaditya are set down at about 550 a.d. He follows Dr. Bhao 
Daji, and is sustained by Mr. Fergusson, author of " Tree and Ser- 
pent Worship," and other works on religious architecture. It was 
the period of learned and literary men, as well as of active religious 
controversy. " Believers in Buddha and believers in the Veda lived 
together at this time," he remarks, " very much as Protestants and 
Roman Catholics do at the present day — -fighting when there is an 
opportunity or necessity for it, but otherwise sharing the same air 
as fellow-creatures." Among a crowd of others we may instance 
Dignaga, a Buddhist, Kalidasa, a Siva worshipper, and Manatunga, 
a Gaina, as frequenting the royal court. Vasubandhu, to whom the 
revival of Buddhist literature was largely due, was the son of a 
Brahman and a student of the Nyaya philosophy ; as, indeed, 
Hiouen-thsang, the Chinese traveller, also studied logic under a 
Brahmana teacher, 

Vikramaditj'^a oscillated between all parties. Having quarrelled 
with the King of Kasmira and Manorhita, the great Buddhist teacher 
at the convent near Peshawer, he called an assembly of Sastrikas 
and /Sramanas, at which the latter were denounced. He also placed 
Matrigupta (Kalidasa ?) over that country. At his death, however, 
the regal authority was surrendered to the legitimate king, who in 



114 LECTURE III. 

that the King of Persia, Khosru Nushirvaii, sent his 
physician, Barzoi, to India, in order to translate the 
fables c^f the Pa?l^atantra, or rather their original, from 

his turn reinstated <S'iiaditya, the successor of Vikrama, on the 
throne. This king also called an assembly of divines, and the Bud- 
dhists were restored to their former position. As they seem to have 
constituted the principal men of learning, I am disposed to believe 
that they were the actual restorers of the golden period to India. 
The " Nine Gems," Professor Miiller is very confident, belong to this 
period. He declares that the philosophical Sutras have no ascer- 
tained date prior to 300 a.d. 

According to him, we need not refer many famous authors to a 
period anterior to the fifth century. Kalidasa, from being the con- 
temporary of Augustus, becomes the contemporary of Justinian, and 
the very books which were most admired by Sanskrit students as 
specimens of ancient Indian poetry and wisdom find their rightful 
place in the period of literary renaissance, coinciding with an age 
of renewed literary activity in Persia, soon to be followed there, as 
later in India, by the great Mohammedan conquests. It appears to 
me that he is altogether too iconoclastic. It is more than probable 
that the apj^arent lateness of date is due to the destruction of books 
when the Buddhists were driven out of India. It would be as logical, 
it seems to me, to assign a post-Christian date to the Vendidad and 
Yasna because they had been lost and were collected anew under the 
auspices of a Sassanid king. We are told in the second book of the 
Maccabees that Antiochus Epijjhanes burned the Hebrew Scriptures, 
and that Judas Makkabasus made a new collection ; j^et nobody 
pretends that they ought to be assigned to the second century b.c. 
In fact, we must in due*sincerity give some room to faith. 

Astronomy was also studied. Aryabhatta the elder had described 
the earth as making a revolution which produced the daily rising 
and setting of the sun. Professor Miiller thinks he had no predeces- 
sors. Varaihamihira wrote during the reign of Vikramaditya, and 
employs the Yuga in opposition to the Saka era. It is apparent, 
however, that the Greek zodiac was employed. Badarayana describes 
the pictorial representations of the Twelve Signs and their relation 
to the body of Brahman or the Creator : 

" The Eam is the head ; the face of the Creator is the Bull ; the 
breast would be the Man-pair ; the heart, the Crab ; the Lion, the 
stomach ; the Maid, the hip ; the Balance-bearer, the belly ; the 



HUMAl^r INTEREST OF SAISTSKRIT LITERATURE. 115 

Sanskrit into Palilavl. The famoiis '"ISiine Gems,'' or 
"the nine classics/' as we should say, have been re- 
ferred, at least in part, to the same age, "' and I doubt 
whether we shall be able to assign a much earlier date to 
anything we possess of Sanskrit literature, excepting 
always the Yedic and Buddhistic writings. 

Although the specimens of tliis modern Sanskrit liter- 
ature, when they first became known, served to arouse 
a general interest, and serve even now to keep alive a 
certain superficial sympathy for Indian literature, more 
serious students had soon disposed of these compositions, 
and while gladly admitting their claim to be called pretty 
and attractive, could not think of allowing to Sanskrit 
literature a place among the world-literatures, a place by 
the side of Greek and Latin, Italian, French, English, or 
German. 

There was indeed a time when joeople began to imag- 
ine that all that was worth knomng about Indian litera- 
ture was known, and that the only ground on which 
Sanskrit could claim a place among the recognized 
branches of learning in a university was its usefulness 
for the study of the Science of Language. 

At that very time, however, now about forty years 
ago, a new start was made, which has given to Sanskrit 
scholarship an entirely new character. The chief author 
of that movement was Burnouf , then professor at the 
College de Fra/riGe in Paris, an excellent scholar, but at 

eighth (Scorpion), the membrum ; the Archer, his pair of thighs ; the 
Makara, his pair of knees ; the Pot, his pair of legs ; the Fish-pair, his 
two feet." Another writer gives them in like series as the members 
of Kala or Time. Other evidence seems even more conclusive ; 
Varahamihira giving the actual Greek names in a Sanskrit dress. — 
A. W. 

* Kern, Preface to " Brihatsa«i§,hita, p. 20. 



116 LECTURE III. 

the same time a man of wide views and true historical 
instincts, and the last man to waste his life on mere 
]SIala&? and /S^akiintalas. Being brought up in the old tra- 
ditions of the classical school in France (his father was 
the author of the well-known Greek Grammar), then for 
a time a promising young barrister, with influential 
friends such as Guizot, Thiers, Mignet, Yillemain, at 
his side, and with a brilliant future before him, he was 
not likely to spend his life on prettj Sanskrit ditties. 
What he wanted when he threw himself on Sanskrit was 
history, human history, world-history, and with an un- 
erring grasp he laid hold of Yedic literature and Bud- 
dhist literature, as the two stepping-stones in the slough 
of Indian literature. He died young, and has left a few 
arches only of the building he wished to rear. But his 
spirit lived on in his pupils and his friends, and few 
would deny that the first impulse, directly or indirectly, 
to all that has been accom.plished since by the students 
of Yedic and Buddhist literature, was given by Burnouf 
and his lectures at the College de France. 

What then, you may ask, do we find in that ancient 
Sanskrit literature and cannot find anywhere else ? My 
answer is : We find there the Aryan man, whom we 
know in his various characters, as Greek, Koman, Ger- 
man, Celt, and Slave, in an entirely new character. 
Whereas in his migrations northward his active and po- 
litical energies are called out and brought to their highest 
perfection, we find the other side of the human charac- 
ter, the passive and meditative, carried to its fullest 
growth in India. In some of the hymns of the Kig-Yeda 
we can still watch an earlier phase. We see the Aryan 
tribes taking possession of the land, and under the guid- 
ance of such warlike gods as Indra and the Maruts, de- 
fending their new homes against the assaults of the 



HUMAK iKTEREST OP 8AKSKRIT LtTERATURE. iVi 

black-skinned aborigines as well as against tlie inroads of 
later Aryan colonists. But that period of war soon came 
to an end, and when the great mass of the peopl^ had 
once settled down in their homesteads, the military and 
political duties seem to have been monopolized by what 
we call a easte,^' that is by a small aristocracy, while the 
great majority of the people were satisfied w^ith spend- 
ing their days within the narrow spheres of their vil- 
lages, little concerned about the outside world, and con- 
tent with the gifts that nature bestowed on them, with- 
out much labor. We read in the Mahabliarata (XIII. 
22) : 

'' There is fruit on the trees in every forest, which 
every one who likes may pluck without trouble. There 
is cool and sweet water in the pure rivers here and there. 
There is a soft bed made of the twigs of beautiful creej^- 
ers. And yet wretched people suffer pain at the door of 
the rich !" 

At first sight we may feel inclined to call this quiet 
enjoyment of life, this mere looking on, a degeneracy 
rather than a growth. It seems so different from what 
we think life ought to be. Yet, from a higher point of 

* During times of conquest and migration, such as are represented 
to us in the hymns of the Kig-Veda, the system of castes, as it is 
described, for instance, in the Laws of Manu, would have been a 
simple impossibility. It is doubtful whether such a system v/as ever 
more than a social ideal, but even for such an ideal the materials 
would have been wanting during the period when the Aryas were 
first taking possession of the land of the Seven Bivers. On the 
other hand, even during that early period, there must have been a 
division of labor, and hence we expect to find and do find in the 
gramas of the Five Nations, warriors, sometimes called nobles, 
leaders, kings ; counsellors, sometimes called priests, prophets, 
judges ; and loorking men, whether ploughers, or builders, or road- 
makers. These three divisions we can clearly perceive even in the 
early hymns of the llig-Yeda. 



118 L^cftiRE ill. 

view it may appear that those Southern Aryans have 
chosen the good part, or at least the part good for them, 
while we, Northern Aryans, ^' have been careful and 
troubled about many things. 

It is at all events a problem worth considering 
whether, as there is in nature a South and a North, there 
are not two hemispheres also in human nature, both 
worth developing — the active, combative, and political 
on one side, the passive, meditative, and philosophical 
on the other ; and for the solution of that problem no 
literature furnishes such ample materials as that of the 
Yeda, beginning with the Hymns and ending with the 
Upani shads. We enter into a new world — not always 
an attractive one, least of all to us ; but it possesses one 
charm, it is real, it is of natural growth, and like every- 
thing of natural growth, 1 believe it had a hidden pur- 
pose, and was intended to teach us some kind of lesson 
that is worth learning, and that certainly we could learn 
nowhere else. We are not called upon either to admire 
or to despise that ancient Yedic literature ; we liave 
simply to study and to try to understand it. 

There have been silly persons who have represented 
the development of the Indian mind as superior to any 
other, nay, who would make us go back to the Yeda or 
to the sacred writings of the Buddhists in order to find 
there a truer religion, a purer morahty, and a more sub- 
lime philosophy than our own. 1 shall not even men- 
tion the names of these writers or the titles of their 
works. But I feel equally impatient when I see other 
scholars criticising the ancient literature of India as if it 
were the work of the nineteenth century, as if it repre- 
sented an enemy that must be defeated, and that can 
claim no mercy at our hands. That the Yeda is full of 
childish, silly, even to our minds monstrous concep- 



HUMAN" IJS^TEllEST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 119 

tions, who would deny ? But even these monstrosi- 
ties are interesting and instructive ; nay, many of them, 
if we can but make allowance for different ways of 
thought and language, contain germs of truth and rays 
of light, all the more striking because breaking upon us 
through the veil of the darkest night. 

Here lies the general, the truly human interest which 
the ancient literature of India possesses, and which gives 
it a claim on the attention, not only of Oriental scholars 
or of students of ancient history, but of every educated 
man and woman. 

There are problems which we may put aside for a 
time, ay, which we must put aside while engaged each 
in our own hard struggle for life, but which, will recur 
for all that, and which, whenever they do recur, will 
stir us more deeply than we like to confess to others, or 
even to ourselves. It is true that with us one day only 
out of seven is set apart for rest and meditation, and for 
the consideration of what the Greeks called ra fieytara — 
" the greatest things." It is true that that seventh day 
also is passed by many of us either in mere church- 
going routine or in thoughtless rest. But whether on 
week-days or on Sundays, whether in youth or in old 
age, there are moments, rare though they be, yet for 
all that the most critical moments of our life, when the 
old simple questions of humanity return to us in all 
their intensity, and we ask ourselves. What are we ? 
What is this life on earth meant for ? Are we to have 
no rest here, but to be always toihng and building up 
our own happiness out of the ruins of tlie happiness of 
our neighbors ? And when we have made our home on 
earth as comfortable as it can be made with steam and 
gas and electricity, are we really so much happier than 
the Hindu in his primitive homestead ? 



120 LECTURE III. 

With US, as I said just now. in these Northern 
chmates, where hfe is and always must be a struggle, 
and a hard struggle too, and where accumulation of 
wealth has become almost a necessity to guard against 
the uncertainties of old age or the accidents inevitable in 
our complicated social life — with us, I say, and in our 
society, hours of rest and meditation are but few and far 
between. It was the same as long as we know the his- 
tory of the Teutonic races ; it was the same even with 
Romans and Greeks. The European climate, with its 
long cold winters, in ma.ny places also the difficulty of 
cultivating the soil, the conflict of interests betw^een 
small communities, has developed the instinct of self- 
preservation (not to say self-indulgence) to such an ex- 
tent that most of the virtues and most of the vices of 
European society can be traced back to that source. 
Our own character was formed under these influences, 
by inheritance, by education, by necessity. We all lead 
a fighting-life ; our highest ideal of life is a fighting- 
life. We work till w^e can work no longer, and are 
proud, like old horses, to die in harness. We point with 
inward satisfaction to what we and our ancestors have 
achieved by hard work, in founding a family or a busi- 
ness, a town or a state. We point to the marvels of 
what we call civilization — our splendid cities, our high- 
roads and bridges, our ships, our railways, our tele- 
graphs, our electric light, our pictures, our statues, our 
music, our theatres. We imagine we have made life on 
earth quite perfect — in some cases so perfect that we are 
almost sorry to leave it again. But the lesson which 
both Brahmans and Buddhists are never tired of teach- 
ing is that this life is but a journey from one village to 
another, and not a resting-place. Thus we read : '^' 

* Boehtlingk, Spriiche, 5101. 



HUMAl^ INTEEEST OF SANSKEIT LITERATURE. 121 

^' As a man journeying to anotlier village may enjoy 
a night's rest in the open air, but, after leaving his rest- 
ing-place, proceeds again on his journey the next day, 
thus father, mother, wife, and wealth are all but Hke a 
night's rest to us — wise people do not cling to them for- 
ever." 

Instead of simply despising this Indian view of hfe, 
might we not pause for a moment and consider whether 
their philosophy of life is entirely wrong, and ours en- 
tirely right ; whether this earth was really meant for 
work only (for with us pleasure also has been changed 
into work), for constant hurry and flurry ; or whether 
we, sturdy Northern Aryans, might not have been satis- 
fied with a httle less of work, and a little less of so- 
called pleasure, but with a little more of thought and a 
little more of rest. For, short as our life is, we are not 
mere may-flies, that are born in the morning to die at 
night. We have a past to look back to and a future to 
look forward to, and it may be that some of the riddles 
of the future find their solution in the wisdom of the 
past. 

Then why should we always &x our eyes on the pres- 
ent only ? Why should we always be racing, whether 
for wealth or for power or for fame ? Why should we 
never rest and be thankful ? 

I do not deny that the manly vigor, the silent endur- 
ance, the public spirit, and the private virtues too, of the 
citizens of European states represent one side, it may be 
a very important side, of the destiny which man has to 
fulfil on earth. 

But there is surely another side of our nature, and 
possibly another destiny open to man in his journey 
across this life, which should not be entirely ignored. 
If we turn our eyes to the East, and particularly to In- 



122 LECTURE III. 

dia, where life is, or at all events was, no very severe 
struggle, where the climate was mild, the soil fertile, 
where vegetable food in small quantities sufficed to keep 
the body in health and strength, where the simplest hut 
or cave in a forest was all the shelter required, and 
where social Hfe never assumed the gigantic, ay mon- 
strous proportions of a London or Paris, but fulfilled it- 
self within the narrow boundaries of village-communi- 
ties — was it not, I say, natural there, or, if you like, 
was it not intended there, that another side of human 
nature should be developed — not the active, the combat- 
ive, and acquisitive, but the passive, the meditative, and 
reflective ? Can we wonder that the Aryans, who step- 
ped as strangers into some of the happy fields and val- 
leys along the Indus or the Ganges, should have looked 
upon life as a perpetual Sunday or holiday, or a kind 
of long vacation, delightful so long as it lasts, but 
which must come to an end sooner or later ? Why 
should they have accumulated wealth ? why should they 
have built 23alaces ? why should they have toiled day 
and night ? After having provided from day to day 
for the small necessities of the body, they thought they 
had the right, it may be the duty, to look round upon 
this strange exile, to look inward upon themselves, up- 
ward to something not themselves, and to see whether 
they could not understand a little of the true purport of 
that mystery which we call life on earth. 

Of course we should call such notions of life dreamy, 
unreal, unpractical, but may not they look upon our 
notions of life as short-sighted, fussy, and, in the end, 
most unpracticaL because involving a sacrifice of life for 
the sake of life ? 

^o doubt these are both extreme views, and they have 
hardly ever been held or realized in that extreme form 



HUMAN^ INTEEEST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 123 

by any nation, whether in the East or in the West. We 
are not always plodding — we sometimes allow ourselves 
an hour of rest and j^eace and thought — nor were the 
ancient people of India always dreaming and meditating 
on rd fj,eyiora, on the great problems of life, but, when 
called upon, we know that they too could fight like 
heroes, and that, without machinery, they could by 
patient toil raise even the meanest handiwork into a 
work of art, a real joy to the maker and to the buyer. 

All then that I wish to put clearly before you is this, 
that the Aryan man, who had to fulfil his mission in 
India, might naturally be deficient in many of the j)rac- 
tical and fighting virtues, which were developed in the 
Northern Aryans by the very struggle without which 
they could not have survived, but that his life on earth 
had not therefore been entirely wasted. His very view 
of life, though we cannot adopt it in this Northern 
climate, may yet act as a lesson and a warning to us, 
not, for the sake of life, to sacrifice the highest objects 
of life. 

The greatest conqueror of antiquity stood in silent 
wonderment before the Indian Gymnosophists, regret- 
ting that he could not communicate with them in their 
own language, and that their wisdom could not reach 
him except through the contaminating channels of sun- 
dry interpreters. 

That need not be so at present. Sanskrit is no longer 
a difficult language, and I can assure every young Indian 
civil servant that if he will but go to the fountain-head 
of Indian wisdom, he will find there, among much that 
is strange and useless, some lessons of life which are 
worth learning, and which we in our haste are too apt to 
forget or to despise. 

Let me read you a few sayings only, which you may 



124 LECTURE III. 

still hear repeated in India when, after tlie heat of the 
day, the old and the yoTing assemble together under the 
shadow of their village tree — sayings which to them 
seem truth ; to ns, 1 fear, mere truism ! 

^^ As all have to sleep together laid low in the earth, 
why do foolish people wish to injure one another ? * 

' ' A man seeking for eternal happiness (moksha) 
might obtain it by a hundredth part of the sufferings 
which a foolish man endures in the pursuit of riches, f 

" Poor men eat more excellent bread than the rich ; 
for hunger- gives it sweetness. :j: 

^' Our body is like the foam of the sea, our life like a 
bird, our company with those whom we love does not 
last forever ; why then sleepest thou, my son ?-§ 

'' As two logs of wood meet upon the ocean and then 
separate again, thus do living creatures meet. || 

'^Our meeting with wives, relations, and friends oc- 
curs on our journey. Let a man therefore see clearly 
where he is, whither he will go, what he is, why tarry- 
ing here, and why grieving for anything. T 

^' Family, wife, children, our very body and our 
wealth, they all pass away. They do not belong to us. 
What then is ours ? Our good and our evil deeds. "^^ 

'' When thou goest away from here, no one will fol- 
low thee. Only thy good and thy evil deeds, they will 
follow thee wherever thou goest. f f 

" Wliatever act, good or bad, a man performs, of that 
by necessity he receives the recompense. 1;.^ 

'■ ' According to the Yeda §§ the soul (hf e) is eternal, 

* MaMbh. XI. 121. •][ L. c. XII. 872. 

f PaTlfcat. II. 127 (117). ** L. c. XII. 12453. 

i MaMbh. V. 1144. ff L. c. XII. 12456. 

§ L. c. Xn. 12050. ii L. c. III. 13846 (239). 

1 L. c. XII. 869. ^§ L. c. in. 13864. 



HUMAI^ INTEEEST OF SAITSKRIT LITERATURE. 125 

but the body of all creatures is perishable. When the 
body is destroyed, the soul departs elsewhere, fettered 
by the bonds of our works. 

^^ If 1 know that my own body is not mine, and yet 
that the whole earth is mine, and again that it is both 
mine and thine, no harm can happen then."^ 

'^ As a man puts on new garments in this world, 
throwing aside those which he formerly wore, even so 
the Self f of man puts on new bodies which are in ac- 
cordance with his acts.:]: 

'^ No weapons will hurt the Self of man, no fire will 
burn it, no water moisten it, no wind will dry it up. 

'^ It is not to be hurt, not to be burnt, not to be mois- 
tened, not to be dried up. It is imperishable, unchang- 
ing, immovable, 's^dthout beginning. 

^^ It is said to be immaterial, passing all understand- 
ing, and unchangeable. If you know the Self of man 
to be all this, grieve not. 

There is nothing higher than the attainment of the 
knowledge of the Self. § 

'^ All living creatures are the dwelling of the SeK who 
lies enveloped in matter, who is immortal, and spotless. 
Those who worship the Self, the immovable, living in a 
movable dwelling, become immortal. 

'' Despising everything else, a wise man should strive 
after the knowledge of the Self." 

We shall have to return to this subject again, for this 
knowledge of the Self is really the Veddnta, that is, the 
end, the highest goal of the Yeda. The highest wisdom 
of Greece was " to know ourselves ;" the highest ^vis- 
dom of India is ^' to know our SeK." 

* Kam. Nitis, 1, 23 (Boelitlingk, 918). 

f Aiman, see Lecture VII. — A. W. :}: Vish?in-sutras XX, 50-53, 

§ Apastamba Dharma-sutras I. 8, 22, 



126 LECTURE III. 

If I were asked to indicate by one word the distin- 
giiishing feature of the Indian character, as I have here 
tried to sketch it, I should say it was transcendent, using 
that word, not in its strict technical sense, as fixed by 
Kant, but in its more general acceptation, as denoting 
a mind bent on transcending the limits of empirical 
knowledge. There are minds perfectly satisfied with em- 
pirical knowledge, a knowledge of facts, well ascertained, 
well classified, and well labelled. Such knowledge may 
assume very vast proportions, and, if knowledge is 
power, it may impart great power, real intellectual 
power to the man who can wield and utihze it. Our 
own age is proud of that kind of knowledge, and to be 
content with it, and never to attempt to look beyond it, 
is, I believe, one of the happiest states of mind to be in."^ 

But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who has 
once caught a glance of it, is like a man who has gazed 
at the sun — wherever he looks, everywhere he sees the 
image of the sun.' Speak to him of finite things, and he 
will tell you that the Finite is impossible and meaning- 
less without the Infinite. Speak to him of death, and 
he will call it birth ; speak to him of time, and he will 
call it the mere shadow of eternity. To us the senses 
seem to be the organs, the tools, the most powerful en- 
gines of knowledge ; to him they are, if not actually de- 
ceivers, at all events heavy fetters, checking the fiight of 
the spirit. To us this earth, this life, all that we see, 
and hear, and touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our 
home, here lie our duties, here our pleasures. To him 

* Can a state be justly regarded as one of happiness, in which the 
essential being is oyerlooked and not regarded ; whereas that subtler 
essence is the reality which gives life, energy, and purity to all our 
motives? Is to be " of the" earth, earthy," a greater felicity than to 
acknowledge that which is from heaven ? I trow not, — A, W= 



HUMAI^ INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 127 

this eartli is a thing that once was not, and that again 
will cease to be ; this life is a short dream from which 
we shall soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater 
ignorance than of what to others seems to be most cer- 
tain, namely what we see, and hear, and touch ; and as 
to onr home, wherever that may be, he knows that cer- 
tainly it is not here. 

Do not suppose that such men are mere dreamers. 
Far from it ! And if we can only bring ourselves to be 
quite honest to ourselves, we shall have to confess that 
at times we all have been visited by these transcendental 
aspirations, and have been able to understand what 
Wordsworth meant when he spoke of those 

*' Obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 
Fallings from us, vanishings ; 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized." 

The transcendent temperament acquired no doubt a 
more complete supremacy in the Indian character than 
anywhere else ; but no nation, and no individual, is en- 
tirely without that ' ' yearning beyond ;' ' indeed we all 
know it under a more familiar name — namely, Religion. 

It is necessary, however, to distinguish between re- 
ligion and a religion, quite as much as in another branch 
of philosophy we have to distinguish between language 
and a language or many languages. A man may accept 
a religion, he may be converted to the Christian religion, 
and he may change his own particular religion from time 
to time, just as he may speak different languages. But 
in order to have a religion, a man must have religion. 
He must once at least in his life have looked beyond the 
horizon of this world, and carried away in his mind an 
impression of the Infinite, which will never leave him 



128 LECTURE III. 

again. A being satisfied with the world of sense, nn- 
conscioii;s of its finite nature, nndistiirbed by the limited 
or negative character of all perceptions of the senses, 
wonld be incapable of any religious concepts. Only 
when the finite character of all human knowledge has 
been received is it possible for the human mind to con- 
ceive tiiat wiiich is beyond the Finite, call it what you 
like, the Beyond, the Unseen, the Infinite, the Super- 
natural, or the Divine. That step must have been taken 
before religion of any kind becomes possible. "What 
kind of religion it will be, depends on the character of 
the race which elaborates it, its surroundings in nature, 
and its experience in history. 

Now we may seem to know a great many religions — I 
speak liere, of course, of ancient religions only, of what 
are sometimes called national or autochthonous re- 
ligions — not of those founded in later times by individ- 
ual prophets or reformers. 

Yet, among those ancient religions we seldom know, 
what after all is the most important point, their origin 
and their gradual growth. The Jewish religion is repre- 
sented to us as perfect and complete from the very first, 
and it is with great difiaculty that we can discover its real 
beginnings and its historical growth. And take the 
Greek and the Roman religions, take the religions of the 
Teutonic,^ Slavonic, or Celtic tribes, and you will find 
that their period of growth has always passed, long be- 
fore we know them, and that from the time we know 
them, all their changes are purely m-etmnorphic — changes 
in form of substances ready at hand. !N"ow let us look to 
the ancient inhabitants of India. With them, first of 
all, religion was not only one interest by the side of 
many. It was the all-abs*orbing interest ; it embraced 
not only worship and prayer, but wdiat we call philosophy, 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 129 

xQorality, law, and government — all was pervaded by re- 
ligion. Their whole life was to them a religion — everj- 
tiiing else was, as it were, a mere concession inade to the 
ephemeral requirements of this life. 

What then can we learn from the ancient religious 
literature of India, or from the Veda ? 

It requires no very profound knowledge of Greek re- 
ligion and Greek language to discover in the Greek dei- 
ties the original outlines of certain physical phenomena. 
Every schoolboy knows that in Zeus there is something 
of the sky, in Poseidon of the sea, in Hades of the 
lower world, in Apollo of the sun, in Arterais of the 
moon, in Ilephmstos of the fire. But for all that, there 
is, from a Greek pomt of view, a very considerable 
difference between Zeus and the sky, between Poseidon 
and the sea, between Apollo and the sun, between Arte- 
7nis and the moon. 

Now what do we find in the Veda ? No doubt here 
and there a few philosophical hymns which have been 
quoted so often that people have begun to imagine that 
the Yeda is a kind of collection of Orphic hymns. "We 
also find some purely mythological hymns, in which the 
Devas or gods have assumed nearly as much dramatic 
personality as in the Homeric hymns. 

But the great majority of Yedic hymns consists in sim- 
ple invocations of the fire, the water, the sky, the sun, 
and the storms, often under the same names which after- 
ward became the proper names of Hindu deities, but as 
yet nearly free from all that can be called irrational or 
mythological. There is nothing irrational, nothing 1 
mean we cannot enter into or sympathize with, in people 
imploring the storms to cease, or the sky to rain, or the 
sun to shine. 1 say there is nothing irrational in it, 
though perhaps it nn'ght be more accurate to say that 



130 LECTUilE III. 

there is nothing in it that would surprise anybody who is 
acquainted with the growth of human reason, or at all 
events, of childish reason. It does not matter how we 
call the tendency of the childish mind to confound the 
manifestation with that which manifests itself, effect 
with cause, act with agent. Call it Animism, Personifi- 
cation, Metaphor, or Poetry, we all know what is meant 
by it, in the most general sense of all these names ; we 
all know that it exists, and the youngest child who beats 
the chair against which he has fallen, or who scolds his 
dog, or who sings: ^'Pain, rain, go to Spain," can 
teach us that, however irrational all this may seem to us, 
it is perfectly rational, natural, ay inevitable in the first 
periods, or the childish age of the human mind. 

]^ow it is exactly this period in the growth of ancient 
religion, which was always presupposed or postulated, 
but was absent everywhere else, that is clearly put be- 
fore us in the hymns of the Pig-Yeda. It is this ancient 
chapter in the history of the human mind which has 
been preserved to us in Indian literature, while we look 
for it in vain in Gi^eece or Pome or elsewhere. 

It has been a favorite idea of those who call them- 
selves ^'students of man," or anthropologists, that in 
order to know the earhest or so-called prehistoric phases 
in the growth of man, we should study the life of savage 
nations, as we may watch it still in some parts of Asia, 
Africa, Polynesia, and America. 

There is much truth in this, and nothing can be more 
useful than the observations which we find collected in 
the works of such students as Waitz, Tylor, Lubbock, 
and many others. But let us be honest, and confess, 
first of all, that the materials on which we have here to 
depend are often extremely untrustworthy. 

'Nov is this all. What do we know of savage tribes 



HUMAK INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 131 

beyond the last chapter of their history ? Do we ever 
get an insight into their antecedents ? Can we under- 
stand, what after all is everywhere the most important 
and the most instructive lesson to learn, how they have 
come to be what they are ? There is indeed their lan- 
guage, and in it we see traces of growth that point to 
distant ages, quite as much as the Greek of Homer or 
the Sanskrit of the Yedas. Their language proves in- 
deed that these so-called heathens, with their compli- 
cated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, 
their unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the 
creatures of to-day or yesterday. Unless we admit a 
special creation for these savages, they must be as old as 
the Hindus, the Greeks and Romans, as old as we our- 
selves. We may assume, of course, if we Hke, that 
their life has been stationary, and that they are to-day 
what the Hindus were no longer 3000 years ago. But 
that is a mere guess, and is contradicted by the facts of 
their language. They may have passed through ever so 
many vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive 
may be, for all we know, a relapse into savagery, or a 
corruption of something that was more rational and in- 
telligible in former stages. Think only of the rules that 
determine marriage among the lowest of savage tribes. 
Their complication passes all understanding, all seems a 
chaos of prejudice, superstition, pride, vanity, and stu- 
pidity. And yet we catch a glimpse here and there that 
there was some reason in most of that unreason ; we see 
how sense dwindled away into nonsense, custom into cer- 
emony, ceremony into farce. Why then should this sur- 
face of savage hfe represent to us the lowest stratum of 
human hfe, the very beginnings of civihzation, simply 
because we cannot dig beyond that surface ? 

Eow, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not 



132 LECTURE III. 

claim for the ancient Indian literature any more than 1 
should willingly concede to the fables and traditions and 
songs of savage nations, such as we can study at present 
in what we call a state of nature. Both are important 
documents to the student of the Science of Man. I 
simply say that in the Yeda we have a nearer approach 
to a beginning, and an intelligible beginning, than in the 
wild invocations of Hottentots or Bushmen. But when 
1 speak of a beginning, I do not mean an absolute begin- 
ning, a beginning of all things. Again and again the 
question has been asked whether we could bring our- 
selves to believe that man, as soon as he could stand on 
his legs, instead of crawling on all fours, as he is sup- 
posed to have done, burst forth into singing Yedic 
hymns ? But who has ever maintained this ? Surely 
whoever has eyes to see can see in every Yedic hymn, ay, 
in every Yedic word, as many rings within rings as ai'e 
in the oldest tree that was ever hewn down in the forest. 

1 shall say even more, and I have said it before, 
namely, that supposing that the Yedic hymns were com- 
posed between 1500 and 1000 b.c, we can hardly under- 
stand how, at so early a date, the Indians had developed 
ideas which to us sound decidedly modern. I should 
give anything if I could escape from the conclusion that 
the collection of the Yedic Hymns, a collection in ten 
books, existed at least 1000 B.C., that is, about 500 years 
before the rise of Buddhism. I do not mean to say that 
something may not be discovered hereafter to enable us 
to refer that collection to a later date. All I say is that, 
so far as we know at jpresent, so far as all honest San- 
skrit scholars know at jpresent^ we cannot well bring our 
pre-Buddhistic literature into narrower limits than five 
hundred years. 

What then is to be done ? We must simply keep our 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 133 

preconceived notions of wliat people call primitive 
humanity in abeyance for a time, and if we iind that 
people three thousand years ago were familiar with ideas 
that seem novel and nineteenth-century-like to us, well, 
we must somewhat modify our conceptions of the prim- 
itive savage, and remember that things hid from the 
wise and prudent have sometimes been revealed to babes. 

I maintain tlien that for a study of man, or, if you 
like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing in 
the world equal in importance with the Yeda. I main- 
tain that to everybody who cares for himself, for his an- 
Qestors, for his history, or for his intellectual develop- 
ment, a study of Yedic literature is indispensable ; and 
that, as an element of liberal education, it is far more 
important and far more improving than the reigns of 
Babylonian and Persian kings. 

It is curious to observe the reluctance with which 
these facts are accepted, particularly by those to whom 
they ought to be most welcome, I mean the students of 
anthropology. Instead of devoting all their energy to 
the study of these documents, which have come upon us 
like a miracle, they seem only bent on inventing excuses 
why they need not be studied. Let it not be supposed 
that, because there are several translations of the Rig- 
Yeda in English, French and German, therefore all that 
the Yeda can teach us has been learned. Far from it. 
Every one of these translations has been put forward as 
tentative only. I myself, though during the last thii-ty 
years I have given translations of a number of the more 
important hymns, have only ventured to publish a spec- 
imen of what I think a translation of the Yeda ought to 
be ; and that translation, that traduction raisonnee as 1 
ventured to call it, of twelve hymns only, fills a whole 
volume. We are still on the mere sm-face of Yedic Kt- 



134 LECTURE III. 

eratnre, and yet our critics are ready witli ever so many 
argiiuients why the Yeda can teach us nothing as to a 
primitive state of man. If they mean by primitive that 
which came absohitely first, then they ask for some- 
thing which they will never get, not even if they dis- 
covered the private correspondence of Adam and Eve, or 
of the first Homo and Femina swpiens. We mean by 
primitive the earhest state of man of which, from the 
nature of the case, we can hope to gain any knowledge ; 
and here, next to the archives hidden away in the secret 
drawers of language, in the treasury of words common 
to all the Aryan tribes, and in the radical elements of 
which each word is compounded, there is no literary 
relic more full of lessons to the true anthropologist, to 
the true student of mankind, than the Rig-Yecla. 



LECTURE lY. 

OBJECTIONS. 

It may be quite true that controversy often does more 
liarm than good, that it encourages the worst of all tal- 
ents, that of plausibility, not to say dishonesty, and gen- 
erally leaves the world at large worse confounded than it 
was before. It has been said that no clever lawyer 
would shrink from taking a brief to prove that the earth 
forms the centre of the world, and, with all respect for 
English juries, it is not impossible that even in our days 
he might gain a verdict against Galileo. Nor do I 
deny that there is a power and s^itality in truth which in 
the end overcomes and survives all opposition, as shown 
by the very doctrine of Galileo which at present is held 
by hundreds and thousands who would find it extremely 
difficult to advance one single argument in its support. 
I am ready to admit also that those who have done the 
best work, and have contributed most largely toward the 
advancement of knowledge and the progress of truth, 
have seldom wasted their time in controversy, but have 
marched on straight, little concerned either about ap- 
plause on the right or abuse on the left. All this is 
true, perfectly true, and yet I feel that I cannot escape 
from devoting the whole of a lecture to the answering of 
certain objections which have been raised against the 
views which I have put forward with regard to the char- 
acter and the historical importance of Yedic literature. 
We must not forget that the whole subject is new, the 



136 LECTURE IT. 

number of competent judges small, and mistakes not 
only possible, but almost inevitable. Besides, there are 
mistakes and mistakes, and the errors of able men are 
often instructive, nay one might say sometimes almost 
indispensable for the discovery of truth. There are criti- 
cisms which may be safely ignored, criticisms for the 
sake of criticism, if not inspired by meaner motives. 
But there are doubts and difficulties which suggest them- 
selves naturally, objections which have a right to be 
heard, and the very removal of which forms the best 
approach to the stronghold of truth. Nowhere has this 
principle been so fully recognized and been acted on as 
in Indian literature. Whatever subject is started, the 
rule is that the argument should begin with the- purva- 
paksha, with all that can be said against a certain opin- 
ion. Every possible objection is welcome, if only it is 
not altogether frivolous and absurd, and then only fol- 
lows the uttarapaksha, with all that can be said against 
these objections and in support of the original opinion. 
Only when this process has been fully gone through is it 
allowed to represent an opinion as siddhanta, or estab- 
lished. 

Therefore, before opening the pages of the Yeda, and 
giving you a description of the poetiy, the religion, and 
philosophy of the ancient inhabitants of India, 1 thought 
it right and necessary to establish, first of all, certain 
points without which it would be impossible to form a 
right appreciation of the historical value of the Yedic 
hymns, and of their importance even to us who live at so 
great a distance from those early poets. 

The Jirst j^oint was purely preliminary, namely that 
the Hindus in ancient, and in modern times also, are a 
nation deserving of our interest and sympathy, worthy 
also of our confidence, and by no means guilty of the 



OBJECTION'S. 137 

charge so recklessly brought against them — the charge 
of an habitual disregard of truth. 

Secondly^ that the ancient literature of India is not to 
be considered simply as a curiosity and to be handed 
over to the good pleasure of Oriental scholars, but that, 
both by its language, the Sanskrit, and by its most 
ancient literary documents, the Yedas, it can teach us 
lessons which nothing else can teach, as to the origin of 
our own language, the first formation of our own con- 
cepts, and the true natural germs of all that is compre- 
hended under the name of civilization, at least the civil- 
ization of the Aryan race, that race to which w^e and all 
the greatest nations of the world — the Hindus, the Per- 
sians, the Greeks and Eomans, the Slaves, the Celts, 
and last, not least, the Teutons, belong. A man may be 
a good and useful ploughman without being a geologist, 
without knowing the stratum on which he takes his 
stand, or the strata beneath that give support to the soil 
on which he lives and works, and from which he draws 
his nourishment. And a man may be a good and useful 
citizen, without being an historian, without knowing 
how the world in which he lives came about, and how 
many phases mankind had to pass through in language, 
religion, and philosophy, before it could supply him 
with that intellectual soil on which he lives and works, 
and from which he draws his best nourishment. 

But there must always be an aristocracy of those who 
know, and who can trace back the best which we pos- 
sess, not merely to a J^orman count, or a Scandinavian 
viking, or a Saxon earl, but to far older ancestors and 
benefactors, who thousands of years ago were toiling 
for us in the sweat of their face, and without whom we 
should never be what we are — the ancestors of the whole 
Aryan race, the first f ramers of our words, the first poets 



138 LECTURE IV. 

of oiir thoughts, the first givers of our laws, the first 
prophets of our gods, and of Rim who is God above all 
gods. 

That aristocracy of those who know — di color che 
sanno — or try to know, is open to all who are willing to 
enter, to all who have a feeling for the past, an interest 
in the genealogy of our thoughts, and a reverence for 
the ancestry of our intellect, who are in fact historians in 
the true sense of the word, i.e. inquirers into that which 
is past, but not lost. 

Thirdly^ having explained to you why the ancient lit- 
erature of India, the really ancient literature of that 
country, I mean that of the Yedic period, deserves the 
careful attention, not of Oriental scholars only, but of 
every educated man and woman who wishes to know 
how we, even we here in England and in this nineteenth 
century of ours, came to be what we are, 1 tried to ex- 
plain to you the difference, and the natural and inevita- 
ble difference, between the development of the human 
character in such different climates as those of India and 
Europe. And while admitting that the Hindus were de- 
ficient in many of those manly virtues and practical 
achievements which we value most, I wished to point out 
that there was another sphere of intellectual activity in 
which the Hindus excelled — the meditative and trans- 
cendent — and that here we might learn from them some 
lessons of life which we ourselves are but too apt to ig- 
nore or to despise. 

Fourthly, fearing that I might have raised too high 
expectations of the ancient wisdom, the religion and 
philosophy of the Yedic Indians, I felt it my duty to 
state that, though primitive in one sense, we must not 
expect the Yedic religion to be primitive in the anthro- 
pological sense of the word, as containing the utterances 



OBJECTIONS. 139 

of beings who had just broken their shells, and were 
wonderingly looking out for the first time ii]3on this 
strange world. The Yeda may be called primitive, be- 
cause there is no other literary document more primitive 
than it ; but the language, the mythology, the religion 
and philosophy that meet us in the Yeda open vistas of 
the past which no one would venture to measure in 
years. Nay, they contain, by the side of simple, 
natural, childish thoughts, many ideas which to us sound 
modern, or secondary and tertiary, as 1 called them, but 
which nevertheless are older than any other literary doc- 
ument, and give us trustworthy information of a period 
in the history of human thought of which we knew ab- 
solutely nothing before the discovery of the Yedas.* 

But even thus our path is not yet clear. Other objec- 
tions have been raised against the Yeda as an historical 
document. Some of them are important ; and I have 
at times shared them myself. Others are at least in- 
structive, and will give us an opportunity of testing the 
foundation on which we stand. 

The first objection then against our treating the Yeda 
as an historical document is that it is not truly national 
in its character, and does not represent the thoughts of 
the whole of the population of India, but only of a small 
minority, namely of the Brahmans, and not even of the 
whole class of Brahmans, but only of a small minority of 
them, namely of the professional priests. 

Objections should not be based on demands which, 
from the nature of the case, are unreasonable. Have 
those who maintain that the Yedic hymns do not repre- 

* If ve applied the name of literature to the cylinders of Babylon 
and the papyri of Egypt, we should have to admit that some of these 
documents are more ancient than any date we dare as yet assign to 
the hymns collected in the ten books of the Rig- Veda. 



140 LECTUEE IV. 

sent the whole of India, that is the whole of its ancient 
population, in the same manner as they saj that the 
Bible represents the Jews or Homer the Greeks, consid- 
ered what they are asking for ? So far from denying 
that the Yedic hymns represent only a small and, it may 
be, a priestly minority of the ancient population of India, 
the true historian would probably feel inclined to urge 
the same cautions against the Old Testament and the 
Homeric poems also. 

No doubt, after the books which compose the Old Tes- 
tament had been collected as a Sacred Canon, they were 
known to the majority of the Jews. But when we 
S23eak of the primitive state of the Jews, of their moral, 
intellectual, and religious status while in Mesopotamia 
or Canaan or Egypt, we should find that the different 
books of the Old Testament teach us as little of the 
whole Jewish race, with all its local characteristics and 
social distinctions, as the Homeric poems do of all the 
Greek tribes, or the Yedic hymns of all the inhabitants 
of India. Surely, even when we speak of the history of 
the Greeks or the Romans, we know that we shall not 
find there a complete picture of the social, intellectual, 
and religious hfe of a whole nation. We know very 
little of the intellectual life of a whole nation, even dur- 
ing the Middle Ages, ay, even at the present day. We 
may know something of the generals, of the command- 
ers-in-chief, but of the privates, of the millions, we 
know next to nothing. And what we do know of kings 
or generals or ministers is mostly no more than what was 
thought of them by a few Greek poets or Jewish 
prophets, men who were one in a million among their 
contemporaries. 

But it might be said that though the writers were few, 
the readers were many. Is that so ? I believe you 



OBJECTIONS. 141 

would be surprised, to hear how small the number of 
readers is even in modern times, while in ancient times 
reading was restricted to the very smallest class of privi- 
leged persons. There may have been listeners at public 
and private festivals, at sacrifices, and later on in thea- 
tres, but readers, in our sense of the word, are a very 
"modern invention. 

There never has been so much reading, reading spread 
over so large an area, as in our times. But if you asked 
publishers as to the number of copies sold of books 
which are supposed to have been read by everybody, say 
Macaulay's History of England, the Life of the Prince 
Consort, or Darwin's Origin of Species, you would find 
that out of a population of thirty-two millions not one 
million has possessed itself of a copy of these works. 
The book which of late has probably had the largest sale 
is the Revised Yersion of the 'New Testament ; and yet 
the whole number of copies sold among the eighty mill- 
ions of English-speaking people is probably not more than 
four millions. Of ordinary books whicK are called books 
of the season, and which are supposed to have had a 
great success, an edition of three or four thousand copies 
is not considered unsatisfactory by publishers or authors 
in England. But if you look to other countries, such, 
for instance, as Russia, it would be very difficult indeed 
to name books that could be considered as representative 
of the whole nation, or as even known by more than a 
very small minority. 

And if we turn our thoughts back to the ancient 
nations of Greece and Italy, or of Persia and Babylonia, 
what book is there^ with the exception perhaps of the 
Homeric poems, of which we could say that it had been 
read or even heard of by more than a few thousand peo- 
ple ? We think of Greeks and Romans as literary peo- 



142 LECTURE IV. 

pie, and so no doubt they were, but in a very different 
sense from wbat we mean by this. What we call 
Greeks and Romans are chiefly the citizens of Athens 
and Rome, and here again those who could produce or 
who could read such works as the Dialogues of Plato or 
the Epistles of Horace constituted a very small intellect- 
ual aristocracy indeed. What we call history — the mem- 
ory of the past — has always been the work of minorities. 
MilHons and millions pass away unheeded, and the few 
only to whom has been given the gift of fusing speech 
and thought into forms of beauty remain as witnesses of 
the past. 

If then we speak of times so distant as those repre- 
sented by the Rig-Yeda, and of a country so disinte- 
grated, or rather as yet so little integrated as India was 
three thousand years ago, surely it requires but little re- 
flection to know that what we see in the Yedic poems 
are but a few snow-clad peaks, representing to us, from 
a far distance, the whole mountain-range of a nation, 
completely losf beyond the horizon of history. When 
we speak of the Yedic hymns as representing the relig- 
ion, the thoughts and customs of India three thousand 
3^ears ago, we cannot mean by India more than some un- 
known quantity of which the poets of the Yeda are the 
only spokesmen left. When we now speak of India, we 
think of 260 millions, a sixth part of the whole human 
race, peopling the vast peninsula from the Himalayan 
mountains between the arms of the Indus and the Gan- 
ges, down to Cape Comorin and Ceylon, an extent of 
country nearly as large as Europe. In the Yeda the 
stage on which the life of the ancient kings and poets is 
acted, is the valley of the Indus and the Punjab, as it is 
now called, the Sapta SindhasaA, the Seven Rivers of the 
Yedic poets. The land watered by the Ganges is hardly 



OBJECTIONS. 143 

known, and the whole of the Dekkan seems not yet to 
have been discovered. 

Then again, when these Yedic hymns are called the 
lucubrations of a few priests, not the outpourings of the 
genius of a whole nation, what does that mean ? We 
may no doubt call these ancient Yedic poets priests, if 
we like, and no one would deny that their poetry is per- 
vaded not only by religious, mythological, and philoso- 
phical, but likewise by sacrificial and ceremonial conceits. 
Still a priest, if we trace him back far enough, is only a 
jpresbyteros or an elder, and, as such, those Yedic poets 
had a perfect right to speak in the name of a whole class, 
or of the village community to which they belonged. 
Call Yasishz^Aa a priest by all means, only do not let us 
imagine that he was therefore very like Cardinal Man- 
ning. 

After we have made every possible concession to argu- 
ments, most of which are purely hypothetical, there re- 
mains this great fact that here, in the Kig- Yeda, we have 
poems, composed in perfect language, in elaborate metre, 
telling us about gods and men, about sacrifices and bat- 
tles, about the varying aspects of nature and the chang- 
ing conditions of society, about duty and pleasure, phi- 
losophy and morality — articulate voices reaching us from 
a distance from which we never heard before the faintest 
whisper ; and instead of thrilling with delight at this 
almost miraculous discovery, some critics stand aloof and 
can do nothing but find fault, because these songs do not 
represent to us primitive men exactly as they think they 
ought to have been ; not like Papiias or Bushmen, with 
arboraceous habits and half -animal clicks, not as worship- 
ping stocks or stones, or believing in fetiches, as accord- 
ing to Comte's inner consciousness they ought to have 
done, but rather, 1 must confess, as beings whom we can 



144 LECTURE IV. 

understand, with whom to a certain extent we can sym- 
pathize, and to whom, in the historical progress of the 
human intellect, we may assign a place not very far be- 
hind the ancient Jews and G-reeks. 

Once more then, if we mean by primitive, people who 
inhabited this earth as soon as the vanishing of the 
glacial period made this earth inhabitable, the Yedic 
poets were certainly not primitive. If we mean by 
primitive, people who were without a knowledge of lire, 
who used unpolished flints, and ate raw flesh, the Yedic 
poets were not primitive. If we mean by primitive, 
people who did not cultivate the soil, had no fixed 
abodes, no kings, no sacrifices, no laws, again, I say, the 
Yedic poets were not primitive. But if we mean by 
primitive the people who have been the first of the 
Aryan race to leave behind literary relics of their exist- 
ence on earth, then I say the Yedic poets are primitive, 
the Yedic language is primitive, the Yedic religion is 
primitive, and, taken as a whole, more primitive than 
anything else that we are ever Hkely to recover in the 
whole history of our race. 

When all these objections had failed, a last trump was 
played. The ancient Yedic poetry was said to be, if not 
of foreign origin, at least very much infected by foreign, 
and more particularly by Semitic influences. It had al- 
w^ays been urged by Sanskrit scholars as one of the chief 
attractions of Yedic literature that it not only allowed us 
an insight into a very early phase of religious thought, 
but that the Yedic religion was the only one the develop- 
ment of which took place without any extraneous influ- 
ences, and could be watched through a longer series of 
centuries than any other religion, ^ow with regard to 
the first point, we know how perplexing it is in the re- 
ligion of ancient Eome to distinguish between Italian 



OBJECTIONS. 145 

and Greek ingredients, to say nothing of Etruscan and 
Phoenician influences. We know the difficulty of find- 
ing out in the religion of the Greeks what is purely 
home-grown, and what is taken over from Egypt, Phoe- 
nicia, it may be from Scythia ; or at all events, slightly 
colored by those foreign rays of thought. Even in the 
religion of the Hebrews, Babylonian, Phoenician, and at 
a later time Persian influences have been discovered, 
and the more we advance toward modern times, the more 
extensive becomes the mixture of thought, and the more 
difficult the task of assigning to each nation the share 
which it contributed to the common intellectual currency 
of the world. In India alone, and more particularly in 
Yedic India, we see a plant entirely grown on native 
soil, and entirely nurtured by native air. For this rea- 
son, because the religion of the Yeda was so completely 
guarded from all strange infections, it is full of lessons 
which the student of religion could learn nowhere else. 

]^ow what have the critics of the Yeda to say against 
this ? They say that the Yedic poems show clear traces 
of Bahylonimi influences. 

I must enter into some details, because, small as they 
seem, you can see that they involve very wide conse- 
quences. 

There is one verse in the Rig- Yeda, YIII. Y8, 2,* 
which has been translated as follows : '' Oh Indra, bring 
to us a brilliant jewel, a cow, a horse, an ornament, to- 
gether with a golden Mana." f 

* A na^ bhara vj'afig'anam gam asvam abhyanj/anam Safca manSL 
hiranyaya. 

f Grassman translates, "Zugleich mit goldenem Geratb ;" Lnd- 
wig, " Zusammt mit goldenem Zierrath ;" Zimmer, " Und eine 
Mana gold." The Petersburg Dictionary explains mana by " ein 
bestimmtes Gerath oder Gewicht" (Gold). 



146 LECTURE lY. 

Now what is a golden Mana ? The word does not 
occur again by itself, either in the Yeda or anywhere 
else, and it has been identified b/ Yedic scholars with 
the Latin rtiina^ the Greek \iva^ the Phoenician manah 
(n^Q),-5«- the well-known weight which we actually pos- 
sess now among the treasures brought from Babylon and 
!Nineveh to the British Museum. f 

If this were so, it would be irrefragable evidence of at 
all events a commercial intercourse between Babylon 
and India at a very early time, though it would in no 
way prove a real influence of Semitic on Indian thought. 
But is it so ? If we translate saM mana hira^iyaya by 
'' with a mina of gold," we must take mana hira^yaya 
as instrumental cases. But saM never governs an in- 
strumental case. This translation therefore is impossi- 
ble, and although the passage is difficult, because mana 
does not occur again in the Rig- Yeda, I should think we 
might take mana hira?^yaya for a dual, and translate, 
"Give us also two golden armlets." To suppose that 
the Yedic poets should have borrowed this one word and 
this one measure from the Babylonians, would be against 
all the rules of historical criticism. The word mand 
never occurs again in the whole of Sanskrit literature, 
no other Babylonian weight occurs again in the whole of 
Sanskrit literature, and it is not likely that a poet who 
asks for a cov/ and a horse, would ask in the same breath 

* According to Dr. Hatipt, Die Sumerisch-akkadisclie Sprache, 
p. 272, mana is an Akkadian word. 

•j- According to the weights of the lions and ducks preserved in the 
British Museum, an Assyrian mina was = 7747 grains. The same 
difference is still preserved to the present day, as the man of Shiraz 
and Bagdad is just double that of Tabraz and Bushir, the average of 
the former being 14.0 and that of the latter only 6.985. See Cun- 
ningham, " Journal of the Asiatic Society," Calcutta, 1881, p. 163. 



OBJECTIONS. 147 

for a foreign weight of gold, that is, for about sixty sov- 
ereigns. 

But this is not the only loan that India has been sup- 
posed to have negotiated in Babylon. The twenty-seven 
Nakshatras, or the twenty-seven constellations, which 
were chosen in India as a land of lunar Zodiac, were 
supposed to have come from Babylon. J^ow the Baby- 
lonian Zodiac was solar, and, in spite of repeated re- 
searches, no trace of a lunar Zodiac has been found, 
where so many thing-s have been found, in the cuneiform 
inscri23tions. But supposing even that a lunar Zodiac 
had been discovered in Babylon, no one acquainted with 
Yedic literature and with the ancient Yedic ceremonial 
would easily allow himself to be persuaded that the Hin- 
dus had borrowed that simple division of the sky from 
the Babylonians. It is well known that most of the 
Yedic sacrifices depend on the moon, far more than on 
the sun.* As the Psalmist says, '' He appointed the 
moon for seasons; the sun knoweth his going down," 
we read in the Kig-Yeda X. 85, 18, in a verse addressed 
to sun and moon, *' They walk by their own power, one 
after the other (or from east to west), as playing children 
they go round the sacrifice. The one looks upon all 
the worlds, the other is born again and again, determin- 
ing the seasons. 

'^ He becomes new and new, when he is born ; as the 
herald of the days, he goes before the dawns. By his 
approach he determines their share for the gods, the 
moon increases a long life." 

The moon, then, determines the seasons, the rz'tus, 
the moon fixes the share, that is, the sacrificial oblation 

* Preface to the fourth volume of my edition of the Eig-Veda, 
p. li. 



148 LECTURE ly. 

for all the gods. The seasons and the sacrifices were in 
fact so intimately connected together in the thoughts of 
the ancient Hindus, that one of the commonest names 
for priest was ritv-ig, literally, the season-sacrificer. 

Besides the rites which have to be performed every 
day, such as the five Mahaya^;Tas, and the Agnihotra in 
the morning and the evening, the important sacrifices in 
Yedic times were the Full and New-moon sacrifices 
(darsapur^iamasa) ; the Season-sacrifices (Mturmasya), 
each season consisting of four months ;'^ and the Half- 
yearly sacrifices, at the two solstices. There are other 
sacrifices (agraya^ia, etc.) to be performed in autumn 
and summer, others in winter and spring, whenever rice 
and barley are ripening, f 

The regulation of the seasons, as one of the funda- 
mental conditions of an incipient society, seems in fact 
to have been so intimately connected with the worship 
of the gods, as the guardians of the seasons and the pro- 
tectors of law and order, that it is sometimes difficult to 
say whether in their stated sacrifices the maintenance of 
the calendar or the maintenance of the worship of the 
gods was more prominent in the minds of the old Yedic 
priests. 

The twenty -seven Kakshatras then were clearly sug- 
gested by the moon's passage.:!: Nothing was more 
natural for the sake of counting days, months, or seasons 
than to observe the twenty-seven places which the moon 
occupied in her passage from any point of the sky back 
to the same point. It was far easier than to determine 

* Vaisvadevam on the full-moon of Phalgnna, Varunapraghasa^ on 
the full-moon of AshacZ/ia, Sakamedha/i on the full-moon of Krittika, 
see Boehtlingk, Dictionary, s. v. 

f See Vishnu-smriti, ed. Jolly LIX. 4 ; Aryabhafa, Introduction. 

X See Preface to vol. iv. of Rig-Veda, p. li. (1862). 



OBJECTIOITS. 149 

the sun's position either from day to day, or from month 
to month ; for the stars, being hardly visible at the 
actual rising and setting of the sun, the idea of the sun's 
conjunction with certain stars could not suggest itself to 
a hstless observer. The moon, on the contrary, pro- 
gressing from night to night, and coming successively in 
contact with certain stars, was like the finger of a clock, 
moving round a circle, and coming in contact with one 
figure after another on the dial-plate of the sky. Nor 
would the portion of about one third of a lunation in 
addition to the twenty-seven stars from new moon to 
new moon, create much confusion in the minds of the 
rough-and-ready reckoners of those early times. All 
they were concerned with were the twenty-seven celes- 
tial stations which, after being once traced out by the 
moon, were fixed, like so many milestones, for deter- 
mining the course of all the celestial travellers that could 
be of any interest for signs and for seasons, and for days 
and for years. A circle divided into twenty-seven sec- 
tions, or any twenty-seven poles planted in a circle at 
equal distances round a house, would answer the purpose 
of a primitive Yedic observatory. All that was wanted 
to be known was between which pair of j)oles the moon, 
or afterward the sun also, was visible at their rising or 
setting, the observer occupying the same central position 
on every day. 

Our notions of astronomy cannot in fact be too crude 
and too imperfect if we wish to understand the first be- 
ginnings in the reckoning of days and seasons and years. 
We cannot expect in those days more than what any 
shepherd would know at present of the sun and moon, 
the stars and seasons. Nor can we expect any observa- 
tions of heavenly phenomena unless they had some bear- 
ing on the practical wants of primitive society. 



150 LECTURE IV. 

If tlien we can watch in India the natural, nay inevi- 
table, growth of the division of the heaven into twenty- 
seven equal divisions, each division marked by stars, 
which may have been observed and named long before 
they were used for this new purpose — if, on the other 
hand, we could hardly understand the growth and de- 
velopment of the Indian ceremonial except as determined 
by a knowledge of the lunar asterisms, the lunar 
months, and the lunar seasons, surely it would be a sense- 
less hypothesis to imagine that the Yedic shepherds or 
priests went to Babylonia in search of a knowledge which 
every shepherd might have acquired on the banks of the 
Indus, and that, after their return from that country 
only, where a language was spoken which no Hindu 
could understand, they set to work to compose their 
sacred hymns and arrange their simple ceremonial. We 
must never forget that what is natural in one place is 
natural in other places also, and we may sum up without 
fear of serious contradiction, that no case has been made 
out in favor of a foreign origin of the elementary astro- 
nomical notions of the Hindus as found or presupposed 
in the Yedic hymns.* 

The Arabs, as is well known, have twenty-eight lunar 
stations, the Manzil, and I can see no reason why Mo- 
hammed and his Bedouins in the desert should not have 
made the same observation as the Yedic poets in India, 
though I must admit at the same time that Colebrooke 
has brought forward very cogent arguments to prove 
that, in their scientific employment at least, the Arabic 
Manzil were really borrowed from an Indian source, f 

The Chinese, too, have their famous lunar stations, 
the Sieic, originally twenty-four in number, and after- 

* See Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 352-357. 
\ L. c. p. Ixx. 



OBJECTIONS. 151 

ward raised to twenty-eiglit."^ But here again there is 
no necessity whatever for admitting, with Biot, Lassen, 
and others, that the Hindus went to China to gain their 
simplest elementary notions of lunar chrononomy. First 
of all, the Chinese began with twenty-four, and raised 
them to twenty-eight ; the Hindus began with twenty- 
seven, and raised them to twenty-eight. Secondly, out 
of these twenty-eight asterisms, there are seventeen only 
which can really be identified with the Hindu stars 
(taras). Isow if a scientific system is borrowed, it is bor- 
rowed complete. But, in our case, I see really no pos- 
sible channel through which Chinese astronomical knowl- 
edge could have been conducted to India so early as 
1000 before our era. In Chinese literature India is 
never mentioned before the middle of the second cen- 
tury before Christ ; and if the ^inas in the later San- 
skrit literature are meant for Chinese, which is doubtful, 
it is important to observe that that name never occurs in 
Yedic literature, f 



* See Zimmer, Altindisclies Leben, p. xlvii. 

f In the Mahabharata and elsewhere the ^nas are mentioned 
among the Dasyus or non-Aryan races in the north and in the east 
of India. King Bhagadatta is said to have had an army of ^inas and 
Kiratas,* and the Panda vas are said to reach the town of the King of 
the Kulindas, after having passed through the countries of ^inas, 
Tukharas, and Daradas. AU this is as vague as ethnological indi- 
cations generally are in the late epic poetry of India. The only pos- 
sibly real element is that Kirata and Kino, soldiers are called kanfcana, 
gold or yellow colored, f and compared to a forest of Karnikaras, 
which were trees with yellow flowers. J In Mahabh. VI. 9, v. 373, 
vol. ii., p. 344, the ^inas occur in company with Kambogas and 
Yavanas, which again conveys nothing definite. 

Chinese scholars tell us that the name of China is of modern 

* Lassen, i. p. 1029 ; Mahabh. HI. 117, v. 12,350 ; vol. i. p. 619. 

+ Mahabh. V. 18, v. 584 ; vol. ii. p. 106. 

t See V&A;aspatya s. v. ; Ka^Ait KarnikiiragauraA, 



152 LECTURE IV. 

When therefore the impossibility of so early a com- 
naunication between China and India had at last been 
recognized, a new theory was formed, namely, " that the 
knowledge of Chinese astronomy was not imported 
straight from China to India, but was carried, together 
with the Chinese system of division of the heavens into 
twenty-eight mansions, into Western Asia, at a period 
not mnch later than 1100 e.g., and was then adopted by 
some Western people, either Semitic or Iranian. In 
their hands it was supposed to have received a new 
form, snch as adapted it to a ruder and less scientific 
method of observation, the limiting stars of the mansions 
being converted into zodiacal groups or constellations, 
and in some instances altered in position, so as to be 
brought nearer to the general planetary path of the 
ecliptic. In this changed form, having become a means 
of roughly determining and describing the places and 
movements of the planets, it was believed to have passed 
into the keeping of the Hindus, very probably along 
with the first knowledge of the planets themselves, and 
entered upon an independent career of history in India. 
It still maintained itself in its old seat, leaving its traces 
later in the Bundahash ; and made its way so far west- 
ward as finally to become known and adopted by the 
Arabs. ' ' With due respect for the astronomical knowl- 
edge of those who hold this view, all I can say is that 

origin, and only dates from the Thsin dynasty or from the famous 
Emperor SM-hoang-ti, 247 b.c. But the name itself, though in a more 
restricted sense, occurs in earlier documents, and may, as Lassen 
thinks,* have become known to the Western neighbors of China. It 
is certainly strange that the Sinim too, mentioned in Isaiah slix. 12, 
have been taken by the old commentators for people of China, visit- 
ing Babylon as merchants and travellers. 

* Lassen, vol. i. p. 1039, n. 2. 



OBJECTIOlsrS. 153 

this Is a novel, and nothing but a novel, without any 
facts to support it, and that the few facts which are 
known to us do not enable a careful reasoner to go be- 
yond the conclusions stated many years ago by Cole- 
brooke, that the *^ Hindus had undoubtedly made some 
progress at an early period in the astronomy cultivated 
by them for the regulation ol time. Their calendar, 
both civil and religious, was governed chiefly, not ex- 
clusively, by the moon and the sun ; and the motions of 
these luminaries were carefully observed by them, and 
with such success that their determination of the moon's 
synodical revolution, which was what they were princi- 
pally concerned with, is a much more correct one than 
the G-reeks ever achieved. They had a division of the 
ecliptic into twenty-seven and twenty-eight parts, sug- 
gested evidently by the moon's period in days, and 
seemingly their own ; it was certainly borrowed by the 
Arabians. ' ' 

There is one more argument which has been adduced 
in support of a Babylonian, or, at all events, a Semitic 
influence to be discovered in Yedic literature which we 
must shortly examine. It refers to the story of the 
Deluge. 

That story, as you know, has been traced in the tra- 
ditions of many races, which could not well have bor- 
rowed it from one another ; and it was rather a surprise 
that no allusion even to a local deluge should occur in 
any of the Yedic hymns, particularly as very elaborate 
accounts of different kinds of deluges are found in the 
later Epic poems, and in the still later Pura^as, and 
form in fact a very familiar subject in the religious tra- 
ditions of the people of India. 

Three of the Avataras or incarnations of Yish^iu are 
connected with a deluge, that of the Fisli^ that of the 



154 LECTURE IV. 

Tortoise, and that of the Boar, Yish^ii in each case res- 
cuing mankind from destruction by water, by assuming 
the form of a fish, or a tortoise, or a boar. 

This being so, it seemed a very natural conclusion to 
make that, as there was no mention of a deluge in the 
most ancient literature of India, that legend had pene- 
trated into India from without at a later time. 

When, however, the Vedic literature became more 
generally known, stories of a deluge were discovered, if 
not in the hymns, at least in the prose writings, belong- 
ing to the second period, commonly called the Brahma^ia 
period. Not only the story of Manu and the JFish, but 
the stories of the Tortoise and of the Boar also, were 
met with there in a more or less complete form, and 
with this discovery the idea of a foreign importation lost 
much of its plausibiHty. I shall read you at least one of 
these accounts of a Deluge which is found in the /(Siata- 
patha BrahmaTia, and you can then judge for yourselves 
whether the similarities between it and the account in 
Genesis are really such as to require, nay as to admit, the 
hypothesis that the Hindus borrowed their account of 
the Deluge from their nearest Semitic neighbors. 

We read in the xSktapatha Brahma/ia I. 8, 1 : 

*^ In the morning they brought water to Manu for 
washing, as they bring it even now for washing our 
hands. 

'' While he was thus washing, a fish came into his 
hands. 

'' 2. The fish spoke this word to Manu : ^ Keep me, 
and I shall save thee. ' 

' ' Manu said : ' From what wilt thou save me ? ' 

* ' The fish said : ^ A flood will carry away all these 
creatures, and I shall save thee from it.' 

" Manu said : ' How canst thou be kept ? ' 



OBJECTIONS. 155 

'* 3. The fisli said : ^ So long as we are small, there is 
much destruction for us, for fish swallows fish. Keep 
me therefore first in a jar. When I outgrow that, dig 
a hole and keep me in it. When I outgrow that, take 
me to the sea, and I shall then be beyond the reach of 
destruction. ' 

^'4. He became soon a large fish (^Aasha), for such a 
fish grows largest. The fish said : ' In such and such a 
year the fiood will come. Therefore when thou hast 
built a ship, thou shalt meditate on me. And when the 
flood has risen, thou shalt enter into the ship, and 1 will 
save thee from the flood. ' 

'' 6. Having thus kept the fish, Manu took him to the 
sea. Then in the same year which the fish had pointed 
out, Manu, having built the ship, meditated on the fish. 
And when the fiood had risen, Manu entered into the 
ship. Then the fish swam toward him, and Manu fast- 
ened the rope of the ship to the fish's horn, and he thus 
hastened toward ^ the JS^orthern Mountain. 

''6. The fish said : ' I have saved thee ; bind the ship 
to a tree. May the water not cut thee off, while thou 
art on the mountain. As the water subsides, do thou 
gradually slide down with it.' Manu then slid down 
gradually with the water, and therefore this is called 
' the Slope of Manu' on the Northern Mountain. ' IN'ow 
the flood had carried away all these creatures, and thus 
Manu was left there alone. 

*' 7. Then Manu went about singing praises and toil- 
ing, wishing for offspring. And he sacrificed there also 
with a Paka-sacrifice. He poured clarified butter, 
thickened milk, whey, and cards in the water as a liba- 

* I prefer now the reading of the K§;nva-sakha, abhidudrava, 
instead of atidudrava or adhidudrava of the other mss. See 
"Weber, Ind. Streifen, i. p. 11. 



156 LECTURE IV. 

tion. In one year a woman arose from it. She came 
forth as if dripping, and clarified butter gathered on her 
step. Mitra and YaruT^a came to meet her. 

'' 8. 'They said to her : * Who art thou ? ' She said : 

* The daughter of Manu. ' They rejoined : ' Say that 
thou art ours.' ' No/ she said, ' he who has begotten 
me, his I am.' 

' ' Then they wished her to be their sister, and she half 
agreed and haK did not agree, but went away, and came 
to Manu. 

*' 9. Manu said to her : ' Who art thou ? ' She said : 

* I am thy daughter. ' ' How, lady, art thou my daugh- 
ter ? ' he asked. 

'' She replied : * The libations which thou hast poured 
into the water, clarified butter, thickened milk, whey 
and curds, by them thou hast begotten me. I am a ben- 
ediction — perform (me) this benediction at the sacrifices. 
If thou perform (me) it at the sacrifice, thou wilt be rich 
in offspring and cattle. And whatever blessing thou 
wilt ask by me, will always accrue to thee. ' He there- 
fore performed that benediction in the middle of the 
sacrifice, for the middle of the sacrifice is that which 
comes between the introductory and the final offerings. 

*^ 10. Then Manu went about with her, singing 
praises and toiling, wishing for offspring. And with her 
he begat that offspring which is called the offspring of 
Manu ; and whatever blessing he asked with her, always 
accrued to him. She is indeed Ida, and whosoever, 
knowing this, goes about (sacrifices) with Ir/a, begets the 
same offspring which Manu begat, and whatever blessing 
he asks with her, always accrues to him. " 

This, no doubt, is the account of a deluge, and Manu 
acts in some respects the same part which is assigned to 
Koah in the Old Testament. But if there are similari- 



OBJECTIONS. 157 

ties, think of the dissimilarities, and how they are to be 
explained. It is quite clear that, if this storj was bor- 
rowed from a Semitic source, it was not borrowed from 
the Old Testament, for in that case it would really seem 
impossible to account for the differences between the 
two stories. That it may have been borrowed "^ from some 
unknown Semitic source cannot, of course, be disproved, 
because no tangible proof has ever been produced that 
would admit of being disproved. But if it were, it would 
be the only Semitic loan in ancient Sanskrit literature — 
and that alone ought to make us pause I 

The story of the boar and the tortoise too, can be 
traced back to the Yedic literature. For we read in the 
Taittiriya Sa??^hita : f 

'' At first this was water, fluid. Pra^apati, the lord 
of creatures, having become wind, moved on it. He 
saw this earth, and becoming a boar, he took it up. Be- 
coming Yi^vakarman, the maker of all things, he cleaned 
it. It spread and became the widespread Earth, and 
this is why the Earth is called PWthivi, the wide- 
spread. " 

And we find in the /Satapatha Brahma^ia J the follow- 
ing slight allusion at least to the tortoise myth : 

'' Pra^apati, assuming the form of a tortoise (Kurma), 
brought forth all creatures. In so far as he brought 
them forth, he made them (akarot), and because he 
made them he was (called) tortoise (Kurma). A tortoise 
is (called) Ka^yapa, and therefore all creatures are called 

* It is not necessary to establish literary borrowing ; for on the 
theory of Bible inspiration and trustworthiness we must assume that 
the Aryans as well as the Semites were saved in the ark. The story 
of a flood supports the story of the flood to a certain extent. — Am. Pubs. 

f VII. 1, 5, 1 seq. ; Muir, i. p. 52 ; Colebrooke, Essays, i. 75. 

X VII. 5, 1, 5 ; Muir, "Original Sanskrit Texts," i. p. 54. 



158 LECTURE IV. 

Kasyapa, tortoise-like. He who was this tortoise (Kurma) 
was really Aditya (the sun). " 

One other allusion to something like a deluge,* im- 
portant chiefly on account of the name of Manu occur- 
ring in it, has been pointed out in the Ka^Aaka (XI. 2), 
where this short sentence occurs ; " The waters cleaned 
this, Manu alone remained." 

All this shows that ideas of a deluge, that is, of a sub- 
mersion of the earth by water and of its rescue through 
divine aid, were not altogether unknown in the early 
traditions of India, while in later times they were em- 
bodied in several of the Avataras of Yish^iu. 

When we examine the numerous accounts of a deluge 
among different nations in almost every part of the 
world, we can easily perceive that they do not refer to 
one single historical event, but to a natural phenomenon 
repeated every year, namely, the deluge or flood of the 
rainy season or the winter, f 

This is nowhere clearer than in Babylon. Sir Henry 
Rawlinson was the first to point out that the twelve 
cantos of the poem of Izdubar or Nimrod refer to the 
twelve months of the year and the twelve representative 
signs of the Zodiac. Dr. Haupt afterward pointed out 
that [ftabard, the wise bull-man in the second canto, corre- 
sponds to the second month, Ijjar, April-May, repre- 
sented in the Zodiac by the bull ; that the union 
between iJabani and Mmrod in the third canto corre- 
sponds to the third month, Sivan, May-June, represented 
in the Zodiac by the twins ; that the sickness of Kimrod 
in the seventh canto corresponds to the seventh month, 
Tishri, September-October, when the sun begins to 
wane ; and that the flood in the eleventh canto corre- 

* Weber, "Indische Streifen," i. p. 11. 
\ See Lecture V. p. 172. 



OBJECTIONS. 159 

sponds to the eleventh month, Shaba2hi, dedicated to the 
storm-god Eimmon,^ represented in the Zodiac by the 
waterman, f 

If that is so, we have snrely a right to claim the same 
natural origin for the story of .the Deluge in India 
which we are bound to admit in other coxintries. And 
even if it could be proved that in the form in which 
these legends have reached us in India they show traces 
of foreign influences, :|: the fact would still remain that 
such influences have been perceived in comparatively 
modern treatises only, and not in the ancient hymns of 
the Kig-Yeda. 

Other conjectures have been made with even less foun- 
dation than that which would place the ancient poets of 
India under the influence of Babylon. China has been 
appealed to, nay even Persia, Parthia, and Bactria, 
countries beyond the reach of India at that early time of 
which we are here speaking, and probably not even then 
consolidated into independent nations or kingdoms. I 
only wonder that traces of the lost Jewish tribes have 
not been discovered in the Yedas, considering that 
Afghanistan has so often been pointed out as one of their 
favorite retreats. 

After having thus carefully examined all the traces of 
supposed foreign influences that have been brought for- 
ward by various scholars, I think I may say that there 
really is no trace whatever of any foreign influence in 
the language, the religion, or the ceremonial of the 
ancient Yedic hterature of India. As it stands before 

* More accurately Ramanu, the Vul or storm-god of George Smith ; 
and the god of the Mind and higher intellect at Babylon. His arcane 
name is said to have been Yav, IH" or 'law.— A. W. 

f See Haupt, " Der Keilinschriftliche Sintfluthbericht, 1881," p. 10. 

X SeeM. M., " Genesis and Avesta" (German translation), i. p. 148. 



160 LECTURE IV. 

US now, so it has grown up, protected by the mountain 
ramparts in the north, the Indus and the Desert in the 
west, the Indus or what was called the sea in the south, 
and the Ganges in the east. It presents us with a 
home-grown poetry and a home-grown religion ; and 
history has preserved to us at least this one relic, in 
order to teach us what the human mind can achieve if 
left to itself, surrounded by a scenery and by conditions 
of life that might have made man's hfe on earth a para- 
dise, if man did not possess the strange art of turning 
even a paradise into a place of misery. * 

* No one is more competent than the learned author to give a ver- 
dict on all the evidence which has been gathered ; but we are only at 
the beginning of research into the intercourse of mankind in remote 
times, and much that was once thought home-grown has already been 
traced to distant points. It is in the general line of progress in re- 
search that more evidence may be expected to connect Vedic thought 
with other cultures. — Am. Pubs. 



LECTURE V. 

THE LESSONS OF THE YEDA. 

Although there is hardly any department of learning 
which has not received new light and new life from the 
ancient literature of India, yet nowhere is the hght that 
comes to us from India so important, so novel, and so 
rich as in the study of religion and mythology. It is to 
this subject therefore that I mean to devote the remain- 
ing lectures of this course. I do so, partly because I 
feel myself most at home in that ancient world of Vedic 
literature in which the germs of Aryan religion have to 
be studied, partly because I believe that for a proper 
understanding of the deepest convictions, or, if you 
like, the strongest prejudices of the modem Hindus, 
nothing is so useful as a knowledge of the Yeda. It is 
perfectly true that nothing would give a falser impression 
of the actual Brahmanical religion than the ancient 
Vedic literature, supposing we were to imagine that 
three thousand years could have passed over India with- 
out producing any change. Such a mistake would be 
nearly as absurd as to deny any difference between the 
Yedic Sanskrit and the spoken Bengali. But no one 
will gain a scholarlike knowledge or a true insight into 
the secret springs of Bengali who is ignorant of the 
grammar of Sanskrit ; and no one will ever understand 
the present religious, philosophical, legal, and social 
opinions of the Hindus who is unable to trace them back 
to their true sources in the Yeda. 



162 LECTURE V. 

1 still remember how, many years ago, when I began 
to publish for the first time the text and the commen- 
tary of the Rig-Yeda, it was argued by a certain, per- 
haps not quite disinterested party, that the Yeda was 
perfectly useless ; that no man in India, however learned, 
could read it, and that it was of no use either for mis- 
sionaries or for any one else who wished to study and to 
influence the native mind. It was said that we ought to 
study the later Sanskrit, the Laws of Manu, the epic 
poems, and, more particularly, the Pura^ias. The Yeda 
might do very well for German students, but not for 
Englishmen. 

There was no excuse for such ignorant assertions even 
thirty years ago, for in these very books, in the Laws of 
Manu, in the Mahabharata, and in the Fura^z^as, the Yeda 
is everywhere proclaimed as the highest authority in 
all matters of religion."^ "A Brahman," says Manu, 
** unlearned in holy writ, is extinguished in an instant 
like dry grass on fire." '' A twice-born man (that is, a 
Brahma?ia, a Kshatriya, and a Yai^ya) not having studied 
the Yeda, soon falls, even when living, to the condition 
of a /Siidra, and his descendants after him." 

How far this license of ignorant assertion may be car- 
ried is shown by the same authorities who denied the 
importance of the Yeda for a historical study of Indian 
thought, boldly charging those wily priests, the Brah- 
mans, with having w^ithheld their sacred literature from 
any but their own caste. I^ow, so far from withholding 
it, the Brahmans have always been striving, and often 
striving in vain, to make the study of their sacred litera- 
ture obligatory on all castes except the /9udras, and the 
passages just quoted from Manu show what penalties 
were threatened if children of the second and third 

* "Wilson, Lectures, p. 9. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 163 

castes, the Kshatrijas and Yaisyas, were not instructed 
in the sacred literature of the Brahmans. 

At present the Brahmans themselves have spoken, and 
the reception they have accorded to my edition of the 
Hig-Yeda"^ and its native commentary, the zeal with 
which they have themselves taken up the study of Yedic 
literature, and the earnestness with which different sects 
are still discussing the proper use that shonld be made of 
their ancient religions writings, show abundantly that a 
Sanskrit scholar ignorant of, or, 1 shonld rather say, de- 
termined to ignore the Yeda, wonld be not much better 
than a Hebrew scholar ignorant of the Old Testament. 

I shall now proceed to give you some characteristic 
specimens of the religion and poetry of the Rig-Yeda. 
They can only be few, and as there is nothing like sys- 
tem or unity of plan in that collection of 1017 hymns, 
which w^e call the Samhita of the Rig-Yeda, I cannot 
promise that they will give you a complete panoramic 
view of that intellectual world in which our Yedic 
ancestors passed their life on earth. 

I could not even answer the question, if you were to 
ask it whether the religion of the Yeda was polytheistio 

* As it has been doTibted, and even denied, tliat tlie publication 
of tbe Eig-Veda and its native commentary has had some important 
bearing on the resuscitation of the religious life of India, I feel bound 
to give at least one from the many testimonials which I have 
received from India. It comes from the Adi Brahma Samaj, 
founded by Earn Mohun Roy, and now represented by its three 
branches, the Adi Brahma Samaj, the Brahma Samaj of India, and 
the Sadharano Brahma Samaj. " The Committee of the Adi Brahma 
Samaj beg to offer you their hearty congratulations on the com- 
pletion of the gigantic task which has occupied you for the last 
quarter of a century. By publishing the Rig- Veda at a time when 
Vedic learning has by some sad fatality become almost extinct in 
the land of its birth, you have conferred a boon upon us Hindus, 
for which we cannot but be eternally grateful." 



164 LECTURE V. 

or monotheistic. Monotheistic, in the nsnal sense of 
that word, it is decidedly not, though there are hymns 
that assert the nnity of the Divine as fearlessly as any 
passage of the Old Testament, or the New Testament, 
or the Koran. Tims one poet says (Rig-Yeda I. 164, 46) : 
*' That which is mie^ sages name it in various ways — they 
call it Agni, Yama, Matari^van." 

Another poet says : '^ The wise poets represent by 
their words Him who is one with beautiful wings, in 
many ways."* 

And again we hear of a being called Hiranyagarbha, 
the golden germ (whatever the original of that name may 
have been), of whom the poet says : f ^' In the beginning 
there arose Hira?iyagarbha ; he was the one born lord of 
all this. He established the earth and this sky. Who 
is the a'od to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?" That 
Hira^iyagarbha, the poet says, " is alone God above all 
gods" (yaA deveshu adhi devaA eka/i aslt) — an assertion 
of the unity of the Divine which could hardly be ex- 
ceeded in strength by any passage from the Old Testa- 
ment. 

But by the side of such passages, which are few in 
number, there are thousands in which ever so many 
divine beings are praised and prayed to. Even their 
number is sometimes given as ''thrice eleven":]: or 
thirty-three, and one poet assigns eleven gods to the 
sky, eleven to the earth, and eleven to the waters, § the 
waters here intended being those of the atmosphere and 
the clouds. These thirty -three gods have even wives 
apportioned to them, || though few of these only have as 
yet attained to the honor of a name.T 

* Rig-Veda X. 114, 5. f Eig-Veda X. 121. % Miiir, iv. 9, 

§ Eig-Yeda I. 139, 11. || Eig-Veda III. 6, 9. 

^ The following names of Devapatnis or wives of the gods are 



THE LESSOlSrS OF THE VEDA. 165 

Tliese thirtj-tliree gods, liowever, by no means in- 
clude all tlie Yedic gods, for such important deities as 
Agni, the fire, Soma, the rain, the Maruts or Storm- 
gods, the Asvins, the gods of Morning and Evening, the 
"Waters, the Dawn, the Sun are mentioned separately ; 
and there are not wanting passages in which the poet is 
carried away into exaggerations, till he proclaims the 
number of his gods to be, not only thirty-three, but 
three thousand three hundred and thirty-nine."^ 

If therefore there must be a name for the religion of 
the Rig-Yeda, polytheism would seem at first sight the 
most appropriate. Polytheism, however, has assumed 
with us a meaning which renders it totally inapplicable 
to the Yedic religion. 

Our ideas of polytheism being chiefly derived from 
Greece and Home, we understand by it a certain more 
or less organized system of gods, different in power and 
rank, and all subordinate to a supreme God, a Zeus or 
Jupiter. The Yedic polytheism differs from the Greek 
and Koman polytheism, and, I may add, likewise from 
the polytheism of the Ural-Altaic, the Polynesian, the 
American, and most of the African races, in the same 
manner as a confederacy of village communities differs 
from a monarchy. There are traces of an earlier stage 
of village-community life to be discovered in the later 
republican and monarchical constitutions, and in the same 
manner nothing can be clearer, particularly in Greece, 
than that the monarchy of Zeus was preceded by what 

given in the Vaitana Sutra XV. 3 (ed. Garbe) : Prithivi, tlie wife 
of Agni, Va/c of Vata, Sena of Indra, Dhena of Brihaspati, Pathya 
of Pushan, Gayatri of Vasn, Trish^ubh of Eudra, (ragati of Aditya, 
Anush^ubh of Mitra, Vira^ of Varuna, Pankti of Yishnu, Diksha of 
Soma. 

* Rig- Veda III. 9, 9. 



166 LECTURE V. "^ 

maj be called tlie septarchy of several of the great gods 
of Greece. The same remark applies to the mythology 
of the Teutonic nations also."^ In the Yeda, however, 
the gods worshipped as supreme by each sept stand still 
side by side. No one is first always, no one is last 
always. Even gods of a decidedly inferior and limited 
character assume occasionally in the eyes of a devoted 
poet a supreme place above all other gods.f It was 
necessary, therefore, for the purpose of accurate reason- 
ing, to have a name, different from polytheis7n, to sig- 
nify this worship of single gods, each occupying for a 
time a supreme position, and I proposed for it the name 
of ICathenotheism, that is, a worship of one god after 
another, or of Ilenotheism^ the worship of single gods. 
This shorter name of Ilenotheism has found more gen- 
eral acceptance, as conveying more definitely the oppo- 
sition between Monotheism^ the worship of one only 
God, and Ilenotheism, the worship of single gods ; and, 
if but properly defined, it will answer its purpose very 
well. However, in researches of this kind we cannot be 
too much on our guard against technical terms. They 
are inevitable, I know ; but they are almost always mis- 
leading. There is, for instance, a hymn addressed to 



* Grimm showed that Thorr is sometimes the supreme god, 
while at other times he is the son of Odinn. This, as Professor 
Zimmer truly remarks, need not be regarded . as the result of a revo- 
lution, or even of gradual decay, as in the case of Dyans and Tyr, 
but simply as inherent in the character of a nascent polytheism. 
See Zeitschrift flir D. A., vol. xii. p. 174. 

f " Among not yet civilized races prayers are addressed to a god 
■with a S2>ecial object, and to that god who is supposed to be most 
powerful in a special domain. He becomes for the moment the 
highest god to whom all others must give place. He may be 
invoked as the highest and the only god, without any slight being 
intended for the other gods." — Zimmer, 1. c. p. 175. 



THE LESSOITS OF THE VEDA. 167 

the Indus and the rivers that fall into it, of which I 
hope to read you a translation, because it determines 
very accurately the geographical scene on which the 
poets of the Yeda passed their life. ]^ow native 
scholars call these rivers d e v a t a s or deities, and Euro- 
pean translators too speak of them as gods and god- 
desses. But in the language used by the poet with re- 
gard to the Indus and the other rivers, there is nothing 
to justify us in saying that he considered these rivers as 
gods and goddesses, unless we mean by gods and god- 
desses something very different from what the Greeks 
called River-gods and River-goddesses, Nymphs, Naja- 
des, or even Muses. 

And what applies to these rivers applies more or less 
to all the objects of Yedic worship. They all are still 
oscillating between what is seen by the senses, what is 
created by fancy, and what is postulated by the under- 
standing ; they are things, persons, causes, according to 
the varying disposition of the poets ; and if we call them 
gods or goddesses, we must remember the remark of an 
ancient native theologian, who reminds us that by 
d e V a t a or deity he means no more than the object cele- 
brated in a hymn, while ^ ^ s h i or seer means no more 
than the subject or the author of a hymn. 

It is difficult to treat of the so-called gods celebrated 
in the Yeda according to any system, for the simple 
reason that the concepts of these gods and the hymns 
addressed to them sprang up spontaneously and without 
any pre-established plan. It is best perhaps for our 
purpose to follow an ancient Brahmanical writer, who is 
supposed to have lived about 400 b.c. He tells us of 
students of the Yeda, before his time, who admitted three 
deities only, viz., Agni or fire, whose place is on the 
earth ; Y a y u or I n d r a, the wind and the god of the 



168 LECTURE V. 

thunderstorm, whose ]3lace is in the air; and Surya, 
the sun, whose place is in the sky. These deities, they 
maintained, received severally many appellations, in con- 
sequence of their greatness, or of the diversity of their 
functions, just as a priest, according to the functions 
which he performs at various sacrifices, receives various 
names. 

This is one view of the Yedic gods, and, though too 
narrow, it cannot be denied that there is some truth in 
it. A very useful division of the Vedic gods might be 
made, and has been made by Yaska, into terrestrial, 
aerial, and celestial, and if the old Hindu theologians 
meant no more than that all the manifestations of divine 
power in nature might be traced back to three centres 
of force, one in the sky, one in the air, and one on the 
earth, he deserves great credit for his sagacity. 

But he hhnself perceived evidently that this generali- 
zation was not quite applicable to all the gods, and he 
goes on to say : ' ' Or, it may be, these gods are all dis- 
tinct beings, for the praises addressed to them are dis- 
tinct, and their appellations also." This is quite right. 
It is the very object of most of these divine names to 
impart distinct individnality to the manifestations of the 
powers of nature ; and though the philosopher or the in- 
spired poet might perceive that these numerous names 
Were but names, while that which was named was one 
and one only, this was certainly not the idea of most of 
the Yedic ^?'shis themselves, still less of the people who 
listened to their songs at fairs and festivals. It is the 
peculiar character of that phase of religious thought 
which we have to study in the Yeda, that in it the 
Divine is conceived and represented as manifold, and 
that many functions are shared in common by various 
gods, no attempt having yet been made at organizing 



THE LESSOKS OF THE VEDA. 169 

the whole body of the gods, sharply separating one 
from the other, and subordinating all of them to several 
or, in the end, to one supreme head. 

Availing ourselves of the division of the Yedic gods 
into terrestrial, aerial, and celestial, as proposed by some 
of the earliest Indian theologians, we should have to 
begin with the gods connected with the earth. 

Before we examine them, however, we have first to 
consider one of the earliest objects of worship and adora- 
tion, namely Earth and Heaven^ or Heaven and Earthy 
conceived as a divine couple. Not only in India, but 
among many other nations, both savage, half-savage, or 
civilized, we meet with Heaven and Earth as one of the 
earliest objects, pondered on, transfigured, and animated 
by the early poets, and more or less clearly conceived by 
early philosophers. It is surprising that it should be so, 
for the conception of the Earth as an independent being, 
and of Heaven as an independent being, and then of 
both together as a divine couple embracing the whole 
universe, requires a considerable effort of abstraction, far 
more than the concepts of other divine powers, such as 
the Fire, the Rain, the Lightning, or the Sun. 

Still so it is, and as it may help us to understand the 
ideas about Heaven and Earth, as we find them in the 
Yeda, and show us at the same time the strong contrast 
between the mythology of the Aryans and that of real 
savages (a contrast of great importance, though I admit 
very difficult to explain), I shall read you first some ex- 
tracts from a book, published by a friend of mine, the 
Rev. William Wyatt Gill, for many years an active and 
most successful missionary in Mangaia, one of those 
Polynesian islands that form a girdle round one quarter 
of our globe,* and all share in the same language, the 

* "Es handelt sich hier nicht um amerikanisclie oder afrikanische 



170 LECTUEE T. 

same religion, the same mythology, and the same cus- 
toms. The book is called *' Myths and Songs from the 
South Pacific,'"^ and it is full of interest to the student 
of mythology and religion. 

The story, as told him by the natives of Mangaia, 
runs as follows : f 

^' The sky is built of solid blue stone. At one time 
it almost touched the earth ; resting upon the stout 
broad leaves of the t e v e (which attains the height of 
about six feet) and the delicate indigenous arrow-root 
(whose slender stem rarely exceeds three feet). 
In this narrow space between earth and sky the inhabi- 
tants of this world were pent up. Ru, whose usual 
residence was in Avaiki, or the shades, had come up 
for a time to this world of ours. Pitying the wretched 
confined residence of the inhabitants, he employed him- 
self in endeavoring to raise the sky a little. For this 
purpose he cut a number of strong stakes of different 
kinds of trees, and firmly planted them in the ground at 
Rangimotia, the centre of the island, and with him the 
centre of the world. This was a considerable improve- 
ment, as mortals were thereby enabled to stand erect 
and to walk about without inconvenience. Hence Ru 
was named ^ The sky-supporter. ' Wherefore Teka sings 
(1794) : 

' Force up the sky, O Ku, 
And let the space be clear ! ' 

Zersplitterung, sondern eine iiberraschende Gleichartigkeit dehnt 
sich durch die Weite und Breite des Still en Oceans, und wenn wir 
Oceanien in der Yollen Auffassung nehmen mit Einschluss Mikro- 
und Mela-nesiens (bis Malaya), selbst weiter. Es lasst sich sagen, 
dass ein einheitlicher Gedankenbau, in etwa 120 Langen und 70 
Breitegraden, ein Viertel unsers Erdglobus iiberwolbt." — Bastian, 
Die Heilige Sage der Polynesier, p. 57. 
* Henry S. King & Co., London, 1876. f P. 58. 



THE LESSOiq-S OF THE VEDA. 171 

" One day wlien the old man was snrveying his work, 
his graceless son Maui contemptnously asked him what 
he was doing there. En replied : ^ Who told youngsters 
to talk ? Take care of yourseK, or 1 will hurl you out 
of existence. ' 

'' ' Do it, then,' shouted Maui. 

^' Ku was as good as his word, and forthwith seized 
Maui, who was small of stature, and threw him to a 
great height. In falling Maui assumed the form of a 
bird, and lightly touched the ground, perfectly un- 
harmed. Maui, now thirsting for revenge, in a moment 
resumed his natural form, but exaggerated to gigantic 
proportions, and ran to his father, saying : 

' Ku, who supportest the many heavens, 
The third, even to the highest, ascend ! ' 

Inserting his head between the old man's legs, he ex- 
erted all his prodigious strength, and hurled poor 'Ru, 
sky and all, to a tremendous height — so high, indeed, 
that the blue sky could never get back again. Un- 
luckily, however, for the sky-supporting Ru, his head 
and shoulders got entangled among the stars. He 
struggled hard, but fruitlessly, to extricate himself. 
Maui walked off well, pleased with having raised the 
sky to its present height, but left half his father's body 
and both his legs ingloriously suspended between heaven 
and earth. Thus perished Ru. His body rotted away, 
and his bones came tumbling down from time to time, 
and were shivered on the earth into countless fragments. 
These shivered bones of Ku are scattered over every hill 
and valley of Mangaia, to the very edge of the sea. " 

What the natives call ' ^ the bones of Hu' ' (t e i v i o 
R u) are pieces of pumice-stone. 

Now let us consider, tirst of aU, whether this story, 



172 LECTURE V. 

which with slight variations is told all over the Poly- 
nesian islands,"^ is pure nonsense, or whether there was 
originally some sense in it. My conviction is that non- 
sense is everywhere the child of sense, only that un- 
fortunately many children, like that youngster Maui, 
consider themselves much wiser than their fathers, and 
occasionally succeed in hurling them out of existence. 

It is a peculiarity of many of the ancient myths that 
they represent events which happen every day, or every 
year, as having happened once upon a time.f The daily 
battle between day and night, the yearly battle between 
winter and spring, are represented almost like historical 
events, and some of the episodes and touches belonging 
originally to these constant battles of nature^ have 
certainly been transferred into and mixed up with battles 
that took place at a certain time, such as, for instance, 
the siege of Troy. When historical recollections failed, 
legendary accounts of the ancient battles between Night 
and Morning, Winter and Spring, were always at hand ; 
and, as in modern times we constantly hear ^* good 
stories," which we have known from our childhood, told 
again and again of any man whom they seem to fit, in the 
same manner, in ancient times, any act of prowess, or 
daring, or mischief, originally told of the sun, '^ the 
orient Conqueror of gloomy Night," was readily trans- 
ferred to and believed of any local hero who might seem 
to be a second Jupiter, or Mars, or Hercules. 

I have little doubt therefore that as the accounts of a 
deluge, for instance, which we find almost everywhere, 
are originally recollections of the annual torrents of rain 
or snow that covered the little worlds within the ken of 

* There is a second version ot the story even in the small island 
ot Mangaia ; see " Myths and Songs," p. 71. 
f tiee before, p, 158. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 173 

the ancient village -bards/'^ this tearing asunder of heaven 
and earth too was originally no more than a description 
of what might be seen every morning. During a dark 
night the shy seemed to cover the earth ; the two seemed 
to be one, and could not be distinguished one from the 
other, f Then came the Dawn, which with its bright 
rays lifted the covering of the dark night to a certain 
point, till at last Maui appeared, small in stature, a mere 
child, that is, the sun of the morning — thrown up sud- 
denly, as it were, when his first rays shot through the 
sky from beneath the horizon, then falling back to the 
earth, like a bird, and rising in gigantic form on the 
morning sky. The dawn now was hurled away, and the 
sky was seen lifted high above the earth ; and Maui, the 
sun, marched on well pleased with having raised the sky 
to its present height. 

Wh}^ pumice-stone should be called the bones of Eu, 
we cannot tell, without knowing a great deal more of 
the language of Mangaia than we do at present. It is 
most likely an independent saying, and was afterward 
united with the story of Ru and Maui. 

Now I must quote at least a few extracts from a Maori 
legend as written down by Judge Manning : :j: 

^ ' This is the Genesis of the JSTew Zealanders : 

*^ The Heavens which are above us, and the Earth 

* This explanation is considered altogether inadequate by many 
scholars. It is, of course, not altogether a question of learning, but 
also one of judgment. — Am, Pubs. 

f '* The Sacred Books of the East," vol. i. p. 249 : "The first half 
is the earth, the second half the heaven, their uniting the rain, the 
uniter Pargranya." And so it is -when it (Parganya) rains thus 
strongly — without ceasing, day and night together — then they say 
also, "Heaven and earth have come together." — From the Aitareya- 
Aranyaka, III. 2, 2.— A. W. 

^ Bastian, Heilige Sage der Polynesier, p. 36, 



174 LECTURE V. 

which lies beneath us, are the progenitors of men, and 
the origin of all things. 

^' Formerly the Heaven lay upon the Earth, and all 
was darkness. 

^' And the children of Heaven and Earth sought to 
discover the difference between light and darkness, 
between day and night. ... 

^' So the sons of Rangi (Heaven) and of Papa (Earth) 
consulted together, and said, ' Let us seek means where- 
by to destroy Heaven and Earth, or to separate them 
from each other. ' 

'' Then said Tumatauenga (the God of War), ^ Let us 
destroy them both. ' 

''Then said Tane-Mahuta (the Forest God), ' Kot 
so ; let them be separated. Let one of them go upward 
and become a stranger to us ; let the other remain below 
and be a parent for us. ' 

'^ Then four of the gods tried to separate Heaven and 
Earth, but did not succeed, while the fifth, Tane, suc- 
ceeded. 

'' After Heaven and Earth had been separated, great 
storms arose, or, as the poet expresses it, one of their 
sons, Tawhiri-Matea, the god of the winds, tried to 
revenge the outrage committed on his parents by his 
brothers. Then follow dismal dusky days, and drip- 
ping chilly skies, and arid scorching blasts. All the 
gods fight, till at last Tu only remains, the god of war, 
who had devoured all his brothers, except the Storm. 
More fights follow, in wliich the greater part of the 
earth was overwhelmed by the waters, and but a small 
portion remained dry. After that, light continued to 
increase, and as the light increased, so also the people 
who had been hidden between Heaven and Earth in- 
creased. . . . And so generation was added to 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 175 

generation down to the time of Maui-Potiki, he who 
brought death into the world. 

*' Now in these latter days Heaven remains far re- 
moved from his wife, the Earth ; but the love of the 
wife rises upward in sighs toward her husband. These 
are the mists which fly upward from the mountain -tops ; 
and the tears of Heaven fall downward on his wife ; 
behold the dew-drops !" 

So far the Maori Genesis. 

Let us now return to the Yeda, and compare these 
crude and somewhat grotesque legends with the language 
of the ancient Aryan poets. In the hymns of the Eig- 
Yeda the separating and keeping apart of Heaven and 
Earth is several times alluded to, and here too it is repre- 
sented as the work of the most vahant gods. In I. 67, 
3 it is Agni, fire, who holds the earth and supports the 
heaven ; in X. 89, 4 it is Indra who keeps them aj)art ; 
in IX. 101, 15 Soma is celebrated for the same deed, 
and in III. 31, 12 other gods too share the same honor. "^ 

In the Aitareya Brahma^ia we read : f " These two 
worlds (Heaven and Earth) were once joined together. 
They went asunder. Then it did not rain, nor did the 
sun shine. And the five tribes did not agree with one 
another. The gods then brought the two (Heaven and 
Earth) together, and when they came together they 
formed a wedding of the gods. ' ' 

Here we have in a shorter form the same funda- 
mental ideas : first, that formerly Heaven and Earth 
were together ; that afterward they were separated ; that 
when they were thus separated there was war throughout 
nature, and neither rain nor sunshine ; that, lastly, 

* Bergaigne, ^' La Religion Vedique," p. 240, 
f Ait. Br. IV. 27 ; Mnir, iv. p. 23. 



176 I.EOTUKE V. 

Heaven and Earth were conciliated, and tliat then a 
great wedding took place. 

Now 1 need hardly remind those who arc acquainted 
with Greek and Roman literature, how familiar these 
and similar conceptions about a marriage between Heaven 
and earth were in Greece and Italy. They seem to 
possess there a more special reference to the annual 
reconciliation between Heaven and Earth, which takes 
place in spring, and to their former estrangement during 
winter. But the first cosmological separation of the 
two always points to the want of light and the impos- 
sibility of distinction during the night, and the gradual 
lifting up of the blue sky through the rising of the sun. * 

In the Homeric hymns f the Earth is addressed as 

*' Mother of gods, tuo wife of the starry Heavon ;" | 

and the Heaven or yEther is often called the father. 
Their marriage too is described, as, for instance, by 
Euripides, when he says : 

"There is the mighty Earth, Jove's ^asther : 

Ho (the -author) is the creator of men and gods ; 
The earth receiving the moist drops of rain, 

Bears mortals, 
Bears food, and the tribes of animals. 
Hence she is not unjustly regarded 
As the mother of all." § 

* See Muir, It. p. 24. | Homer, Hymn xxx. 17. 

if Xalpe Oeuv fj,r}Ti]p, ciT^ox' Ovpavov aarepoevroc. 

§ Euripides, Chrysippus, fragm. 6 (edit, Didot, p. 824) ; 

Taia fiEyiaTr] koI At^f a\0)]p, 

b /x^v AvOpuKuv Kal Oeuv yeveTup, 

7] iV vypof362,ovc oraySvag vot'lovq 

TTapaSe^afiEvij TinreL Ovarovg, 

TiKTec Ji' (SopCiv, (pvTiO, re Oripdv, 

oOev ovii aSlmog 

fiTJTTjp TrdvTcJv vevSfuaTaL. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 177 

And what is more curious still is that we have evi- 
dence that Euripides received this doctrine from his 
teacher, the philosopher Anaxagoras. For Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus "^ tells us that Euripides frequented the 
lectures of Anaxagoras. Now, it was the theory of that 
philosopher that originally all things were in all things, 
but that afterward they became separated. Euripides 
later in life associated with Sokrates, and became doubt- 
ful regarding that theory. He accordingly propounds 
the ancient doctrine by the mouth of another, namely 
Melanippe, who says : 

'^ This saying (myth) is not mine, but came from my 
mother, that formerly Heaven and Earth were one 
shape ; but when they were separated from each other, 
they gave birth and brought all things into the light, 
trees, birds, beasts, and the fishes whom the sea feeds, 
and the race of mortals. ' ' 

Thus we have met with the same idea of the original 
union, of a separation, and of a subsequent reunion of 
Heaven and Earth in Greece, in India, and in the Poly- 
nesian islands. 

Let us now see how the poets of the Yeda address 
these two beings. Heaven and Earth. 

They are mostly addressed in the dual, as two beings 
forming but one concept. We meet, however, with 
verses which are addressed to the Earth by herself, and 
which speak of her as '' kind, without thorns, and 
pleasant to dwell on,"f while there are clear traces in 
some of the hymns that at one time Dyaus, the sky, was 
the supreme deity.:]: When invoked together they are 

* Dionysius Halic, vol. v. p. 355 ; Muir, v. p. 27. 

f Rig- Veda I. 22, 15. 

^ See *' Lectures on the Science of Language," vol. ii. p. 468. 



178 LECTURE Y. 

called Dyavap^^^'thivyau, from d y u, tlie sky, and 
p ^ ^ t h i V i, the broad earth. 

If we examine their epithets, we find that many of 
them reflect simply the physical aspects of Heaven and 
Earth. Thns they are called uru, wide ; u r u v y a ^ a s, 
widely expanded, dure-ante, with limits far apart, 
g a b h i r a, deep ; ghr^'tavat, giving f at ; m a d h n- 
d u g h a, yielding honey or dew ; payasvat, full of 
milk ; bhuri-retas, rich in seed. 

Another class of epithets represents them already as 
endowed with certain human and superhuman qualities, 
such as a s a 5 ^ a t, never tiring, a ^ a r a, not decaying, 
which brings us very near to immortal ; ad ruh,,not in- 
juring, or not deceiving, p r a ^ e t a s, provident, and 
then pita-mata, father and mother, devaputra, having 
the gods for their sons, ^^ta-vr-i^dh and ^ -z^ t a v a t, 
protectors of the ^-z^ta, of what is right, guardians of 
eternal laws. 

Here you see what is so interesting in the Yeda, the 
gradual advance from the material to the spiritual, from 
the sensuous to the supersensuous, from the human to the 
superhuman and the divine. Heaven and Earth were 
seen, and, according to our notions, they might simply 
be classed as visible and finite beings. But the ancient 
poets were more honest to themselves. They could see 
Heaven and Earth, but they never saw them in their 
entirety. They felt that there was something beyond the 
purely finite aspect of these beings, and therefore they 
thought of them, not as they would think of a stone, or 
a tree, or a dog, but as something not- finite, not al- 
together visible or knowable, yet as something important 
to themselves, powerful, strong to bless, but also strong 
to hurt. Whatever was between Heaven and Earth 
seemed to be theirs, their jDi'operty, their realm, their 



THE LESS0:N"S of the VEDA. 179 

dominion. They held and embraced all ; they seemed 
to have produced all. The Devas or bright beings, the 
sun, the dawn, the fire, the wind, the rain, were all 
theirs, and were called therefore the offspring of Heaven 
and Earth. Thus Heaven and Earth became the Uni- 
versal Father and Mother. 

Then we ask at once : '^ "Were then these Heaven and 
Earth gods ?'' But gods in what sense ? In our sense of 
God ? Why, in our sense, Grod is altogether incapable of 
a plural. Then in the Greek sense of the word ? No, 
certainly not ; for what the Greeks called gods was the 
result of an intellectual growth totally independent of the 
Yeda or of India. We must never forget that what we 
call gods in ancient mythologies are not substantial, 
living, individual beings, of whom we can predicate this 
or that. Deva, which we translate by god, is nothing 
but an adjective, expressive of a quality shared by 
heaven and earth, by the sun and the stars and the dawn 
and the sea, namely hrightness y and the idea of god, at 
that early time, contains neither more nor less than what 
is shared in common by all these bright beings. That is 
to say, the idea of god is not an idea ready-made, which 
could be applied in its abstract purity to heaven and 
earth and other such like beings ; but it is an idea, 
growing out of the concepts of heaven and earth and of 
the other bright beings, slowly separating itself from 
them, but never containing more than what was con- 
tained, though confusedly, in the objects to which it was 
successively applied. 

I^Tor must it be supposed that heaven and earth, having 
once been raised to the rank of undecaying or immortal 
beings, of divine parents, of guardians of the laws, were 
thus permanently settled in the religious consciousness of 
the people. Far from it. "When the ideas of other 



180 LECTURE T. 

gods, and of more active and more distinctly personal 
gods had been elaborated, tbe Yedic i^^'sliis asked without 
hesitation : Who then has made heaven and earth ? not 
exactly Heaven and Earth, as conceived before, but 
heaven and earth as seen every day, as a part of what 
began to be called Nature or the Universe. 

Thus one poet says : ^ 

^' He was indeed among the gods the cleverest work- 
man who produced the two brilliant ones (heaven and 
earth), that gladden all things ; he who measured out 
the two bright ones (heaven and earth) by his wisdom, 
and established them on everlasting supports. ' ' 

And again :f ' ^ He was a good workman who pro- 
duced heaven and earth ; the wise, who by his might 
brought together these two (heaven and earth), the 
wide, the deep, the well-fashioned in tlie bottomless 
space." 

Yery soon this great work of making heaven and earth 
was ascribed, like other mighty works, to the mightiest 
of their gods, to Indra. At first we read that Indra, 
originally only a kind of Juj)iter pluvius^ or god of rain, 
stretched out heaven and earth, like a hide \X ^^^^ ^^^ 
held them in his hand,§ that he upholds heaven and 
earth,! and that he grants heaven and earth to his 
worshippers.^ But very soon Indra is praised for having 
made Heaven and Earth ; ^"^ and then, when the poet 
remembers that Heaven and Earth had been praised 
elsewhere as the parents of the gods, and more especially 
as the parents of Indra, he does not hesitate for a 
moment, but says : f f ^' What poets living before us 

* Eig-Veda I. 160, 4. |1 L. c. III. 34, 8. 

f L. c. IV. 56, 3. t L. c. III. 34, 8. 

t L. c. VIII. 6, 5. ** L. c. VIII. 36, 4. 

§ L. c. III. 30, 5. ft L. c. X. 54, 3. 



THE LESSOlsrS OF THE YEDA. 181 

have reached the end of all thy greatness ? for thou hast 
indeed begotten thy father and thy mother together * 
from thy own body !" 

That is a strong measure, and a god who once could 
do that, was no doubt capable of anything afterward. 
The same idea, namely that Indra is greater than heaven 
and earth, is expressed in a less outrageous way by 
another poet, who says f that Indra is greater than 
heaven and earth, and that both together are only a 
half of Indra. Or again :X " The divine Dyaus bowed 
before Indra, before Indra the great Earth bowed with 
her wide spaces." ''At the birth of thy splendor 
Dyaus trembled, the Earth trembled for fear of thy 
anger. "§ 

Thus, from one point of view, Heaven and Earth 
were the greatest gods, they were the parents of every- 
thing, and therefore of the gods also, such as Indra and 
others. 

But, from another point of view, every god that was 
considered as supreme at one time or other, must neces- 
sarily have made heaven and earth, must at all events 
be greater than heaven and earth, and thus the child 
became greater than the father, ay, became the father 
of his father. Indra was not the only god that created 
heaven and earth. In one hymn \ that creation is 
ascribed to Soma and Pushan, by no means very prom- 
inent characters ; in another ^ to Hira?iyagarbha (the 
golden germ) ; in another again to a god who is simply 
called DhatH, the Creator,*^ or Yisvakarman,tt the 

* Cf . rV. 17, 4, where Dyaus is the father of Indra ; see however 
Muir, iv. 31, note. II L- c. II. 40, 1. 

f Rig-Veda VI. 30, 1. IT L- c. X. 121, 9. 

X L. c. I. 131, 1. ** L- c. X. 190, 3. 

§ L. c. IV. 17, 2. ft L. c. X. 81, 2. 



182 LECTUEE V. 

maker of all things. Otlier gods, such as Mitra and 
SavitW, names of the sun, are praised for upholding 
Heaven and Earth, and the same task is sometimes 
performed hj the old god Yaru^a ^ also. 

What I wish you to observe in all this is the perfect 
freedom with which these so-called gods or Devas are 
handled, and particularly the ease and naturalness with 
which now the one, now the other emerges as supreme 
out of this chaotic theogony. This is the pecuhar char- 
acter of the ancient Yedic rehgion, totally different both 
from the Polytheism and from the Monotheism as we 
see it in the Greek and the Jewish religions ; and if the 
Yeda had taught us nothing else but this henotheistio 
phase, which must everywhere have preceded the more 
highly-organized phase of Polytheism which we see in 
Greece, in Koine, and elsewhere, the study of the Yeda 
would not have been in vain. 

It may be quite true that the poetry of the Yeda is 
neither beautiful, in our sense of the word, nor very pro- 
found ; but it is instructive. "When we see those two 
giant spectres of Heaven and Earth on the background 
of the Yedic religion, exerting their influence for a time, 
and then vanishing before the light of younger and more 
active gods, we learn a lesson which it is well to learn, 
and which we can hardly learn anywhere else — the lesson 
how gods were made and unmade — ^how the Beyond or 
the Infinite was named by different names in order to 
bring it near to the mind of man, to make it for a time 
comprehensible, until, when name after name had j)roved 
of no avail, ^ nameless God was felt to answer best the 
restless cravings of the human heart. 

I shall next translate to you the hymn to which I re- 
ferred before as addressed to the Rivers. If the Pivers 

* Eig-Yeda VI. 70, 1. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 183 

are to be called deities at all, they belong to the class of 
terrestrial deities. But the reason why I single out tins 
hymn is not so much because it throws new light on the 
theogonic process, but because it may help to impart some 
reality to the vague conceptions which we form to our- 
selves of the ancient Vedic poets and their surroundings 
The rivers invoked are, as we shall see, the real nvers of 
the Punidb, and the poem shows a much wider geographi- 
cal horizon than we should expect from a mere village- 

" Let the poet declare, O Waters, your exceeding 



bard.* 
1 



greatness, here in the seat of Vivasvat.t By seven and 
seven they have come forth in three courses, but_ the 
Sindhu (the Indus) exceeds all the other wandering rivers 

by her strength. , 

2 " Varu«a dug out paths for thee to walk on, when 
thou rannest to the race.t Thou proceedest on a pre- 

* Eie-Veda X. 75. See Hibbert Lectures, Lect. It. 

. V ™lat iB a name of the sun, and tbe seat or home o£ Yivasvat 
cal hardly be anything but the earth, as the home of the sun, or, 
in a more special sense, the place where a sacrifice is offered. 

t I formerly translated yat va^an abhi ddraya^ t.am by •■when 
thou rannest for the prizes." Grassman 1^^^ ^^f "'^^ 
..■When thou, O Sindhu, rannest to the prize ot the battle, while 
jliZ vrot . "When thou, Sindhu. wast flowing on to greate 
^wlrs" Va;a, connected with Tegeo, .igeo, vigd. wacker (see 
CuItUis Grund^ge, No, 159), is one of the many difficult words m 
"ia^he gene;al meaning of -"* -^^^^.^^--^^^^t;", 
many places cannot yet be determined ^f ^^^''t^'^- J^-'^^l"" 
verv freauently both in the singular and the plural, and some ot 
very trequenuy, uoi, » p.t-rsbuiK Dictionaiy gives 

its meanings are clear enough. The retersDuig .. b 

the foUowing list of them-swiftness, race, P"^\°« '^/^.^X 
treasure, race-horse, etc. Here we perceive at <>- *^« "f, 
of tracing all these meanings back to a »--"°%^°" ^' f Xjf 
might be possible to begin with the meanings of ^t«^8*'''J^;'«; 
contest, race, whether friendly or warlike, then to P-<>-«?^f/^^^ 
Is won in a race or in war, viz. booty, treasure, and lastly to 



1S4 LECTUEE V. 

cipitoiis ridge of the earth, when thoii art lord in the 
van of all the moving streams. 

3. '' The sound rises up to heaven above the earth ; 
she stu^ up with splendor her endless power. "^ As from 
a cloudj the showers thunder forth, when the Sindhu 
comes, roaring like a bull. 

4. ^' To thee, O Sindhu, thej (the other rivers) come 
as lowing mother-cows (run) to their young with their 
milk.f Like a king in battle thou leadest the two wings, 
when thou reachest the front of these down-rushing 
rivers. 

5. " Accept, O Ganga (Ganges), Yamuna (Jumna), 
Sarasvati (Sursuti), /Siitudri (Sutlej), Parushm (Irav^ti, 



vaga/i in the more general sense of acquisitions, goods, even goods 
bestowed as gifts. We have a similar transition of meaning in the 
Greek uQ?io^, contest, contest for a prize, and dd?iov, the prize of 
contest, reward, gift, while in the plural to, dQAa stands again for 
contest, or even the place of combat. The Vedio vagrambhara may 
in fact be rendered by adlo^6po^, vagrasati by ud'koGvvrt. 

The transition from fight to prize is seen in passages such as : 

Eig-Veda VI. 45, 12, vagan indra sravayyan tvaya geshna hitam 
dhanam, "May we with thy help, Indra, win the glorious fights, 
the offered prize" (cf. dQTioQi-TTjc:). 

Eig-Veda VTTT, 19, 18, t6 it v2^ebhiA firigyuA mahat dhdnam, 
" They won great wealth by battles." 

What we want for a proper understanding of our verse, are 
passages where we have, as here, a movement toward va^as in the 
plural. Such passages are few ; for instance : X. 53, 8, dtra 
gfahama y6 asan asevah sivSn vayam ut tarema abhi vagan, ' ' Let 
us leave here those who were unlucky (the dead), and let us get up 
to lucky toils." No more is probably meant here when the Sindhu 
is said to run toward her va^ras, that is, her struggles, her fights, 
her race across the mountains mth the other rivers. 

* On sushma, strength, see Eig-Veda, translation, vol. i. p. 105. 
We find subhram stishmam II. 11, 4 ; and iyarti with sushmam 
IV. 17, 12. 

f See Muir, Santkrit Texts, v. p. 344. 



THE LESSOl^S OF THE VEDA. 185 

Eavi), my praise l^ "With the Asikni (Akesines) Hsten, O 
Marlldvr^dha,f and with the Vitasta (Hjdaspes, Behat) ; 
O Ar^ikiva,:}: listen with the Sushoma.g 

6. '^ First thou goest united with the TWshi^ama on 
thy journey, with the Susartu, the Rasa (Ra?/iha, 
Araxes ? 1), and the Sveti — O Sindhu, with the Kubha 
(Kophen, Cabul river) to the Gomati (Gomal), with the 
Mehatnu to the Krumu (Kurum) — with whom thou pro- 
ceedest together. 

7. " SparHing, bright, with mighty splendor she 
carries the waters across the plains — the unconquered 
Sindhu, the quickest of the quick, like a beautiful mare 
— a sight to see. 

8. ^' Rich in horses, in chariots, in garments, in gold, 
in booty, T[ in wool,"^* and in straw, ff the Sindhu, hand- 
some and young, clothes herself in sweet flowers. :(::[ 

* "0 Marndvridha with Asikni, Vitasta; O Ir^lkiya, listen with 
the Sushoma, Ludwig. " Asikni and Vitasta and Marndvridha, 
with the Sushoma, hear ns, O Argikiya," Grassman. 

f Marudvndha, a general name for river. According to Koth 
the combined course of the Akesines and Hydaspes, before the 
junction with the Hydraotes ; according to Ludwig, the river afler 
the junction with Hydraotes. Zimmer (Altindisches Leben, p. 12) 
adopts Roth's, Kiepert in his maps follows Ludwig's opinion. 

:}: According to laska, the Argikiya is the Vipas. Vivien de Saint- 
Martin takes it for the country watered by the Suwan, the Soanos 
of Megasthenes, 

§ According to Taska the SushomS, is the Indus, Vivien de 
Saint-Martin identifies it with the Suwan. Zimmer (1, c. p. 14) 
points out that in Arrian, Indica, iv. 12, there is a various reading 
Soamos for Soanos. 

II " Chips from a German "Workshop," vol. i. p. 157. 

^ Vagfinivati is by no means an easy word. Hence all transla- 
tors vary, and none settles the meaning. Muir translates, "yielding 
nutriment;" Zimmer, "having plenty of quick horses;" Ludwig, 
"like a strong mare." Vaz/in, no doubt, means a strong horse, a 

[Notes **, tt, ^1^, ou next page,] 



186 LECTUEE V. 

9. '^ The Sindliu has yoked her easy chariot with 
horses ; may she conquer prizes for us in the race. The 

racer, but vagrini never occurs in tlie Eig-Veda in the sense of a mare, 
and the text is not vag^inivat, but vag^inivati. If va^ini meant mare, 
we might translate rich in mares, but that would be a mere repetition 
after svasva, possessed of good horses. Vagfinivati is chiefly applied 
to Ushas, Saras vati, and here to the river Sindhu. It is joined 
with yagebhih, Big-Veda I. 3, 10, which, if vag-ini meant mare, 
would mean " rich in mares through horses.' ' We also read, Eig-Veda 
I. 48, 16, Sam (na/i mimikshva) va^ai^ va^inivati, which we can 
hardly translate hj ''give us horses, thou who art jDossessed of 
mares ;" nor, Eig-Veda I. 92, 15, yukshva hi vai/inivati asvan, 
"harness the horses, thou who art rich in mares." In most of the 
passages where vayinivati occurs, the goddess thus addressed is 
represented as rich, and asked to bestow wealth, and I shpuld 
therefore prefer to take va^/ini, as a collective abstract noun, like 
tretini, in the sense of wealth, originally booty, and to translate 
va^inivati simply by rich, a meaning well adapted to every passage 
where the word occurs. 

** Ur^mvati, rich in wool, probably refers to the flocks of sheep 
for which the North- West of India was famous. See Eig-Veda I. 
126, 7. 

ff Silamavati does not occur again in the Eig-Veda. Muir trans- 
lates, " rich in plants ;" Zimmer, " rich in water ;" Ludwig takes it as 
a projDcr name. Sayajia states that silama is a plant which is made 
into ropes. That the meaning of silamavati was forgotten at an 
early time we see by the Atharva-Veda III. 12, 2, substituting 
siinritavati, for silamavati, as preserved in the ^ankhayana Grihya- 
sutras, 3, 3. I think silama means straw, from whatever plant it may 
be taken, and this would be equally applicable to a sala, a house, 
a sthuna, a post, and to the river Indus. It may have been, as 
Ludwig conjectures, an old local name, and in that case it may 
l^ossibly account for the name given in later times to the Suleiman 
range. 

|:j: Madhuvridh is likewise a word which does not occur again in 
the Eig-Veda. Sayana explains it by nirgundi and similar plants, 
but it is doubtful what plant is meant. Gunda is the name of 
a grass, madhuvridh therefore may have been a plant such as sugar- 
cane, that yielded a sweet juice, the Upper Indus being famous for 
sugar-cane ; see Hiouen-thsang, 11. p. 105. I take adhivaste with 
Jloth in the sense "she dresses herself," as we might say " the river 



THE LESSOiiTS OF THE VEDA. 187 

greatness of her chariot is praised as truly great — that 
chariot which is irresistible, which has its own glory, and 
abundant strength."* 

This hymn does not sound perhaps very poetical, in 
our sense of the word ; yet if you will try to realize the 
thoughts of the poet who composed it, you will perceive 
that it is not without some bold and powerful concep- 
tions. 

Take the modern peasants, living in their villages by 
the side of the Thames, and you must admit that he 
would be a remarkable man who could bring liimself to 
look on the Thames as a kind of a general, riding at the 
head of many English rivers, and leading them on to a 
race or a battle. Yet it is easier to travel in England, 
and to gain a commanding view of the river-system of 
the country, than it was three thousand years ago to 
travel over India, even over that part of India which the 
poet of our hymn commands. He takes in at one swoop 
three great river-systems, or, as he calls them, three 
great armies of rivers — those flowing from the north- 
west into the Indus, those joining it from the north-east, 
and, in the distance, the Ganges and the Jumnah with 
their tributaries. Look on the map and you will see how 
well these three armies are determined ; but our poet 
had no map — ^he had nothing but high mountains and 
sharp eyes to carry out his trigonometrical survey. Kow 

is dressed in heather." Muir translates, " she traverses aland yield- 
ing sweetness ;" Zimmer, "she clothes herself inMadhuvridh ;" Lnd- 
wig, " the Silamavati throws herself into the increaser of the honev- 
sweet dew." All this shows how little progress can be made in 
Vedic scholarship by merely translating either words or verses, 
without giving at the same time a full justification of the meaning 
assigned to every single word. 
* See Petersburg Dictionary, s. v. virapsin. 



188 LECTURE Y. 

I call a man, who for the first time could see those three 
marching armies of rivers, a poet. 

The next thing that strikes one in that hymn — if 
hymn we mnst call it — is the fact that all these rivers, 
large and small, have their own proper names. That 
shows a considerable advance in civilized life, and it 
proves no small degree of coherence, or what the French 
call solidarity, between the tribes who had taken posses- 
sion of Northern India. Most settlers call the river on 
whose banks they settle ' ' the river. ' ' Of course there 
are many names for river. It may be called the 
runner,* the fertilizer, the roarer — or, with a little poet- 
ical metaphor, the arrow, the horse, the cow, the father, 
the mother, the watchman, the child of the mountains. 
Many rivers had many names in different parts of their 
course, and it was only when communication between 
different settlements became more frequent, and a fixed 
terminology was felt to be a matter of necessity, that the 
rivers of a country were properly baptized and regis- 
tered. All this had been gone through in India before 
our hymn became possible. 

And now we have to consider another, to my mind 
most startling fact. We here have a number of names 
of the rivers of India, as they were known to one single 
poet, say about 1000 b.o. We then hear nothing of 
India till we come to the days of Alexander, and when 
we look at the names of the Indian rivers, represented 
as well as they could be by Alexander's companions, 
mere strangers in India, and by means of a strange 
language and a strange alphabet, we recognize, without 
much difficulty, nearly all of the old Yedic names. 

* " Among the Hottentots, the Kunene, Okavango, and Orange 
rivers, all have the name of Garib, le. the Eunner." — Dr. Theoph. 
Hahn, Gai^t Times, July 11, 1882. 



THE LESSORS OF THE YEDA. 189 

In this respect the names of rivers have a great 
advantage over the names of towns in India. "What we 
now call Dim or Delhi ^ was in ancient times called 
Indraprastha, in later times ShahjahdnaMd. Oucle is 
Ayodhya, but the old name of Saketa is forgotten. The 
town of Pa2^aliputra, known to the Greeks as Palim- 
hothraj is now called Patna.\ 

]^ow I can assure you this persistency of the Yedic 
river-names was to my mind something so startling that 
I often said to myself, This cannot be — there must be 
something wrong here. I do not wonder so much at 
the names of the Indus and the Ganges being the same. 
The Indus was known to early traders, whether by sea 
or by land. Skylax sailed from the country of the 
Paktys, i.e. the Pushtus, as the Afghans still call 
themselves, down to the mouth of the Indus. That 
was under Darius Hystaspes (521-486). Even before 
that time India and the Indians were known by their 
name, which was derived from Sindhu, the name of their 
frontier river. The neighboring tribes who spoke Iranic 
languages all pronounced, Kke the Persian, the s as an 
h.X Thus Sindhu became Hindhu (Hidhu), and, ash's 
were dropped even at that early time, Hindhu became 
Indu. Thus the river was called Indos, the people 
Indoi by the Greeks, who first heard of India from the 
Persians. 

Sindhu probably meant originally the divider, keeper, 
and defender, from sidh, to keep off. It was a mas- 
culine, before it became a feminine. J^o more telling 
name could have been given to a broad river, which 
guarded peaceful settlers both against the inroads of 

* DehM, not De?-high.— A. W. 

f Ciinningham, '* Archnsological Survey of India," vol. xii. p. 113. 

\ Pliny, Hist. Nat. vi. 20, 71 : " Indus incolis Sindus appellatus." 



190 LECTURE V. 

hostile tribes and the attacks of wild animals. A com- 
mon name for the ancient settlements of the Aryans in 
India was ''the Seven Rivers," '' Sapta SindhavaA." 
Bnt thongh sindhu was used as an appellative noiui for 
river in general (cf. Eig-Yeda YI. 19, 5, samndre na 
sindhavaA yadamanaA, ''like rivers longing for the 
sea"), it remained throughout the whole history of In- 
dia the name of its powerful guardian river, the Indus. 

In some passages of the Eig-Yeda it has been pointed 
out that sindhu might better be translated by " sea," a 
change of meaning, if so it can be called, fully explained 
by the geographical conditions of the country. There 
are places where people could swim across the Indus, 
there are others where no eye could tell whether the 
boundless expanse of water should be called river or 
sea. The two run into each other, as every sailor 
knows, and naturally the meaning of sindhu, river, runs 
into the meaning of sindhu, sea. 

But besides the two great rivers, the Indus and the 
Ganges— in Sanskrit the Ganga, literally the Go-go — we 
have the smaller rivers, and many of their names also 
agree with the names preserved to us by the companions 
of Alexander.^ 

The Yanmna, the Jumna, was known to Ptolemy as 
Jzdfiovva,f to Pliny as Jomanes, to Arrian, somewhat 
corrupted, as Jobares.;}: 

The /Sutudri, or, as it was afterward called, /Sktadru, 
meaning "running in a hundred streams," was known 
to Ptolemy as ZaddpS7]g or ZdpaSpog ; Pliny called it 
Sydrus ; and Megasthenes, too, was probably acquainted 

* The history of these names has been treated by Professor Lassen, 
in his " Indische Alterthumskunde," and more lately by Prof essor 
Kaegi, in his very careful essay, "Der Rig- Veda," pp. 146, 147. 

f Ptol. vii. 1, 29. I Arrian, Indica, viii. 5. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 191 

with it as ZaddpSrjg. In the Yeda* it formed with 
the Yipa^ the frontier of the Punjab, and we hear of 
fierce battles fought at that time, it may be on the same 
spot where in 1846 the battle of the Sutledge was fought 
by Sir Hugh Gough and Sir Henry Hardinge. It was 
probably on the Yipi^ (later Yipa^a), a north-western 
tributary of the Sutledge, that Alexander's army turned 
back. The river was then called Hyphasis ; Pliny calls 
it Hypasis,t a very fair approximation to the Yedic 
Yipd^, which means ^'unfettered." Its modern name 
is Bias or Bejah. 

The next river on the west is the Yedic Paruslmi, 
better known as Iravati,:j: which Strabo calls Hyarotis, 
while Arrian gis^es it a more Greek appearance by calling 
it Hydraotes. It is the modern Kawi. It was this 
river which the Ten Kings when attacking the TWtsus 
under Sudas tried to cross from the west by cutting off 
its water. But their stratagem failed, and they perished 
in the river (Kig-Yeda YIl. 18, 8-9). 

We then come to the Asikni, which means '' black." 
That river had another name also, ^andrabhaga, which 
means '^ streak of the moon." The Greeks, however, 
pronounced that ^av6apo(pdyog, and this had the unlucky 
meaning of ' ' the devourer of Alexander." Hesychius 
tells us that in order to avert the bad omen Alexander 

* Kig-Veda III. 33, 1 : " From the lap of the mountains Vipas and 
/Sutudri rash forth with their water like two lusty mares neighing, 
fi-eed from their tethers, like two bright mother-cows licking (their 
calf). 

" Ordered by Indra and waiting his bidding you run toward the sea 
like two charioteers ; running together, as your waters rise, the one 
goes into the other, you bright ones." 

f Other classical names are Hypanis, Bipasis, and Bibasis. Yaska 
identifies it with the Argikiya. 

X Of. Nirukta IX. 26. 



192 LECTUKE Y. 

clianged the name of that river into 'Aiceaivr]5, which 
would mean "the Healer ;" but he does not tell, what 
the Yeda tells lis, that this name 'AKsatvrig was a Greek 
adaptation of another name of the same river, namely 
Asikni, which, had evidently supplied to Alexander the 
idea of calhng the Asikni 'AKeoivrjs. It is the modern 
Chinab. 

JN'ext to the Akesines we have the Yedic Yitasta, the 
last of the rivers of the Punjab, changed in Greek into 
Hydaspes. It was to this river that Alexander retired, 
before sending his fleet down the Indus and leading his 
army back to Babylon. It is the modern Behat or 
Jilam. 

1 could identify still more of these Yedic rivers, such 
as, for instance, the Kubha, the Greek Cophen, the 
modern Kabul river ;^ but the names which I have 

* " The first tributaries which join the Indus before its meeting 
with the Kubha or the Kabul river cannot be determined. All trav- 
ellers in these northern countries complain of the continual changes 
in the names of the rivers, and we can hardly hope to find traces of 
the Yedic names in existence there after the lapse of three or four 
thousand years. The rivers intended may be the Shauj'-ook, Ladak, 
Abba Seen, and Burrindu, and one of the four rivers, the Easa, has 
assumed an almost fabulous character in the Yeda. After the Indus 
has joined the Kubha or the Kabul river, two names occur, the Go- 
mati and Krumu, which I believe I was the first to identify with the 
modern rivers the Gomal and Kurrum. (Eoth, Nirukta, Erlauterun- 
gen, p. 43, Anm.) The Gomal falls into the Indus, between Dera 
Ismael Khan and Paharpore, and although Elphinstone calls it a river 
only during the rainy season, Klaproth (Foe-koue-ki, p. 23) describes 
its upper course as far more considerable, and adds : 'Un peu a Test 
de Sirmagha, le Gomal traverse la chaine de montagnes de Soliman, 
passe devant Raghzi, et fertilise le pays habits par les tribus de 
Dauletkhail et de Gandehpour. II se desseche au defile de Pezou, et 
son lit ne se remplit plus d'eau que dans la saison des pluies ; alors 
seulement il rejoint la droite de 1' Indus, au sud-est de bourg dePahar- 
pour.' The Kurrum falls into the Indus north of the Gomal, while, 



THE LESSOl^S OF THE YEDA. 193 

traced from the Yeda to Alexander, and in many cases 
from Alexander again to our own time, seem to me 
sufficient to impress upon us the real and historical 
character of the Yeda. Suppose the Yeda were a 
forgery — suppose at least that it had been put together 
after the time of Alexander — how could we explain 
these names ? They are names that have mostly a 
meaning in Sanskrit, they are names corresponding very 
closely to their Greek corruptions, as pronounced and 
written down by people who did not know Sanskrit. 
How is a forgery possible here ? 

I selected this hymn for two reasons. First, because 
it shows us the widest geographical horizon of the Yedic 
poets, confined by the snowy mountains in the north, 
the Indus and the range of the Suleiman mountains in 
the west, the Indus or the seas in the south, and the 
valley of the Jumna and Ganges in the east. Beyond 
that, the world, though open, was unknown to the 
Yedic poets. Secondly, because the same hymn gives 
us also a kind of historical background to the Yedic 
age. These rivers, as we may see them to-day, as they 
were seen by Alexander and his Macedonians, were seen 
also by the Yedic poets. Here we have an historical 
continuity — almost living witnesses, to tell us that the 
people wdiose songs have been so strangely, ay, you 
may almost say^ so miraculously preserved to us, were 
real people, lairds with their clans, priests, or rather, 

according to the poet, we should expect it south. It might be urged 
that poets are not hound by the same rules as geographers, as we see, 
for instance, in the yerse immediately preceding. But if it should 
be taken as a serious objection, it will be better to give up the Gomati 
than the Krumu, the latter being the larger of the two, and we might 
then take Gomati, 'rich in cattle,' as an adjective belonging to 
Krumu. "-T-From a review of General Cunningham's ''Ancient Geog- 
raphy of India," in Nature, 1871, SejDt. 11. 



194 LECTUEE T. 

servants of their gods, slieplierds witli their flocks, dotted 
about on the hills and valleys, with inclosures or palisades 
here and there, with a few strongholds, too, in case of 
need — living their short life on earth, as at that time 
life might be lived by men, without much pushing and 
crowding and trampling on each other — spring, sum- 
mer, and winter leading them on from year to year, 
and the sun in his rising and setting lifting up their 
thoughts from their meadows and groves which they 
loved, to a world in the East, from which they had 
come, or to a world in the West, to which they were 
gladly hastening on. They had what 1 call religion, 
though it was very simple, and hardly reduced as yet to 
the form of a creed. " There is a Beyond," that was 
all they felt and knew, though they tried, as well as 
they could, to give names to that Beyond, and thus to 
change religion into a religion. They had not as yet a 
name for God — certainly not in our sense of the word — 
or even a general name for the gods ; but they invented 
name after name to enable them to grasp and com- 
prehend by some outward and visible tokens powers 
whose presence they felt in nature, though their true 
and full essence was to them, as it is to us, invisible and 
incomprehensible. 



LECTURE yi. 

VEDIC DEITIES. 

The next important phenomenon of nature which was 
represented in the Yecla as a terrestrial deity is Fire, in 
Sanskrit Agni, in Latin ignis. In the worship which is 
paid to the Fire and in the high praises bestowed on 
Agni we can clearly perceive the traces of a period in 
the history of man in which not only the most essential 
comforts of life, but life itself, depended on the knowl- 
edge of producing fire. To us fire has become so 
famihar that we can hardly form an idea of what life 
would be without it. But how did the ancient dwellers 
on earth get command and possession of fire ? Tlie 
Yedic poets tell us that fire first came to them from the 
sky, in the form of lightning, but that it disappeared 
again, and that then Matari^van, a being to a certain 
extent like Prometheus, brought it back and confided it 
to the safe keeping of the clan of the Bll^'^gus (Phleg- 
yas).* 

In other poems we hear of the mystery of fire being 
produced by rubbing pieces of wood ; and here it is a 
curious fact that the name of the wood thus used for 
rubbing is in Sanskrit Pramantha, a word wdiich, as 
Kuhn has shown, would in Greek come very near to the 
name of Prometheus. The possession of fire, wdiether 
by preserving it as sacred on the hearth, or by producing 
it at pleasure with the fire-drill, rej^resents an enormous 

* Muir, iv. p. 209 



196 LECTURE VI, 

step in early civilization. It enabled people to cook 
their meat instead of eating it raw ; it gave them the 
power of carrying on their work by night ; and in colder 
climates it really preser^^ed them from being frozen to 
death. No wonder, therefore, that the fire should have 
been praised and worshipped as the best and kindest of 
gods, the only god who had come down from heaven to 
live on earth, the friend of man, the messenger of the 
gods, the mediator between gods and men, the immortal 
among mortals. lie, it is said, protects the settlements 
of the Aryans, and frightens away the black-skinned 
enemies. 

Soon, however, fire was conceived by the Yedic poets 
under the more general character of hght and warmth, 
and then the presence of Agni was perceived, not only 
on the hearth and the altar, but in the Dawn, in the 
Sun, and in the world beyond the Sun, while at the 
same time his power was recognized as ripening, or as 
they called it, as cooking, the fruits of the earth, and as 
supporting also the warmth and the life of the human 
body. From that point of view Agni, like other powers, 
rose to the rank of a Supreme God.* He is said to 
have stretched out heaven and earth — naturally, because 
without his light heaven and earth would have been in- 
visible and undistinguishable. The next poet says that 
Agni held heaven aloft by his light, that he kept the 
two worlds asunder ; and in the end Agni is said to be 
the progenitor and father of heaven and earth, and the 
maker of all that flies, or walks, or stands, or moves on 
earth. 

Here we have once more the same process before our 
eyes. The human mind begins with being startled by 
a single or repeated event, such as the lightning striking 

* Muir, iv. p. 214. 



VBDIC DEITIES. 197 

a tree and devouring a whole forest, or a spark of fire 
breaking forth from wood being rubbed against wood, 
whether in a forest, or in the wheel of a carriage, or at 
last in a fire-drill, devised on purpose. Man then begins 
to wonder at what to him is a miracle, none the less so 
because it is a fact, a simple, natural fact. He sees the 
effects of a power, but he can only guess at its cause, 
and if he is to speak of it, he can only do so by speaking 
of it as an agent, or as something like a human agent, 
and, if in some respects not quite human, in others more 
than human or superhuman. Thus the concept of Fire 
grew ; and while it became more and more generalized, 
it also became more sublime, more incomprehensible, 
more divine. Without Agni, without fire, light, and 
warmth, life would have been impossible. Hence he 
became the author and giver of life, of the life of plants 
and animals and of men ; and his favor having once 
been implored for ^^ light and life and all things," what 
wonder that in the minds of some poets, and in the 
traditions of this or that village-community he should 
have been raised to the rank of a supreme ruler, a god 
above all gods, their own true god ! 

We now proceed to consider the powers which the 
ancient poets might have discovered in the air, in the 
clouds, and, more particularly, in those meteoric con- 
flicts which by thunder, lightning, darkness, storms, and 
showers of rain must have taught man that very im- 
portant lesson that he was not alone in this world. 
Many philosophers, as you know, believe that all religion 
arose from fear or terror, and that without thunder and 
lightning to teach us, we should never have believed in 
any gods or god. This is a one-sided a.nd exaggerated 
view. Thunderstorms, no doubt, had a large share in 



198 LECTUEE VI. 

arousing feelings of awe and terror, and in making man 
conscious of his weakness and dependence. Even in the 
Yeda, Indra is introduced as saying : ''Yes, wlien I 
send tliunder and lightning, then you believe in me." 
But what we call religion would never have sprung from 
fear and terror alone. Religion is trust, and that trust 
arose in the beginning from the impressions made on the 
mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom of 
nature, and more particularly by those regularly re- 
curring events, the return of the sun, the revival of the 
moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause and 
effect, gradually discovered in all things, and traced 
back in the end to a cause of all causes, by whatever 
name we choose to call it. 

Still the meteoric phenomena had, no doubt, their 
important share in the production of ancient deities ; 
and in the poems of the Yedic Hishis they naturally 
occupy a very prominent place. If we were asked who 
was the principal god of the Yedic period, we should 
probably, judging from the remains of that poetry which 
we possess, say it was Indra, the god of the blue sky, 
the Indian Zeus, the gatherer of the clouds, the giver 
of raiuj the wi elder of the thunderbolt, the conqueror of 
darkness, and of all the powers of darkness, the bringer 
of light, the source of freshness, vigor, and life, the 
ruler and lord of the whole world. Indra is this, and 
much more in the Yeda. He is supreme in the hymns 
of many poets, and may have been so in the prayers 
addressed to him by many of the ancient septs or village 
communities in India. Compared with him the other 
gods are said to be decrepit old men. Heaven, the old 
Heaven or Dyaus, formerly the father of all the gods, 
nay the father of Indra himself, bows before him, and 
the Earth trembles at his approach. Yet Indra never 



VEDIC DEITIES, 199 

commanded the permanent allegiance of all the other 
gods, like Zeus and Jupiter ; nay, we know from the 
Yeda itself that there were skeptics, even at that early 
time, who denied that there was any such thing as 
Indra. ^ 

By the side of Indra, and associated with him in his 
battles, and sometimes hardly distinguishable from him, 
we find the representatives of the wind, called Yata or 
Yayu, and the more terrible storm-gods, the Maruts, 
literally the Smashers. 

When speaking of the Wind, a poet says if '' Where 
was he born ? Whence did he spring ? the life of the 
gods, the germ of the world ! That god moves about 
where he listeth, his voices are heard, but he is not to be 
seen. ' ' 

The Maruts are more terrible than Yata, the wind. 
They are clearly the representatives of such storms as 
are known in India, when the air is darkened by dust 
and clouds, when in a moment the trees are stripped of 
their foliage, their branches shivered, their stems snap- 
ped, when the earth seems to reel and the mountains 
to shake, and the rivers are lashed into foam and fury. 
Then the poet sees the Maruts approaching with golden 
helmets, with spotted skins on their shoulders, brandish- 
ing golden spears, whirling their axes, shooting fiery 
arrows, and cracking their whips amid thunder and light- 
ning. They are the comrades of Indra, sometimes, like 
Indra, the sons of Dyaus or the sky, but also the sons 
of another terrible god, called Rudra, or the Howler, a 
fighting god, to whom many hymns are addressed. In 
him a new character is evolved, that of a healer and 
saviour — a very natural transition in India, where noth- 
ing is so powerful for dispelling miasmas, restoring 
* Hibbert Lectures, p. 307. f X. 168, 3, 4. 



200 LECTURE VI. 

health, and imparting fresh vigor to man and beast, as 
a thunderstorm, following after weeks of heat and 
drought. 

All these and several others, such as Par^anya and the 
^^bhus, are the gods of mid-air, the most active and 
dramatic gods, ever present to the fancy of the ancient 
poets, and in several cases the prototypes of later heroes, 
celebrated in the epic poems of India. In battles, more 
particularly, these fighting gods of the sky were con- 
stantly invoked.* Indra is the leader in battles, the 
protector of the bright Aiyans, the destroyer of the 
black aboriginal inhabitants of India. '^ He has thrown 
down fifty thousand black fellows," the poet says, '' and 
their strongholds crumbled away like an old rag." 
Strange to say, Indra is praised for having saved his 
people from their enemies, much as Jehovah was praised 
by the Jewish prophets. Thus we read in one hymn 
that when Sudas, the pious king of the Tr^'tsus, was 
pressed hard in his battle with the ten kings, Indra 
changed the flood into an easy ford, and thus saved 
Sudas. 

In another hymn we read :f '^ Thou hast restrained 
the great river for the sake of Turviti Yayya : the flood 
moved in obedience to thee, and thou madest the rivers 
easy to cross." This is not very different from the 
Psalmist (78 : 13) : '^He divided the sea, and caused 
them to pass through ; and he made the waters to stand 
as an heap. ' ' 

And there are other passages which have reminded 
some students of the Yeda of Joshua's battle,:]; when 
the sun stood still and the moon stayed, until the people 
had avenged themselves upon their enemies. For we 

* See Kaegi, Kig-Veda, p. 61, 

f Eig-Veda II. 13, 12 ; IV. 19, 6. | Joshua x. 13. 



YEDIC DEITIES. ^01 

read in the Yeda also, as Professor Kaegi has pointed 
out (1. c. p. 63), that " Indra lengthened the days into 
the night," and that "the Snn unharnessed its chariot 
in the middle of the daj."^ 

In some of the hymns addressed to Indra his original 
connection with the sky and the thunderstorm seems 
quite forgotten. He has become a spiritual god, the 
only king of all worlds and all people, f who sees and 
hears everything, :|: nay, who inspires men with their best 
thoughts. 'No one is equal to him, no one excels him. 

The name of Indra is pecuhar to India, and must have 
been formed after the separation of the great Aryan 
family had taken place, for we find it neither in Greek, 
nor in Latin, nor in German. There are Yedic gods, as 
I mentioned before, whose names must have been framed 
before that separation, and which occur therefore, 
though greatly modified in character, sometimes in 
Greek, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in the Celtic, 
Teutonic,, and Slavonic dialects. D y a u s, for instance, 
is the same word as Zeus or Ju-piter, TJ s h a s is Eos, 
ISTakta is E'yx, Suryais Helios, Agni is ignis, 
B h a g a is Baga in Old Persian, B o g ii in Old Slavonic, 
Y a r u 72. a is Hranos, Y a t a is Wotan, Yikh vox, and 
in the name of the Maruts, or the storm-gods, the germs 
of the Itahc god of war. Mars, have been discovered. 
Besides these direct coincidences, some indirect relations 
have been established between Hermes and S a r a m e y a, 
Dionysos and D y u n i ^ y a, Prometheus and p r a m a n~ 
t h a, Orpheus and I^ih h u, Erinnys and S a r a ti y u, 
Pan and P avana.§ 

* Rig-Veda IV. 30, 3 ; X. 138, 3. 

f L. c. VIII. 37, 3. t L. c. VIII. 78, 5. 

§ I am very strongly inclined to regard these names as Kushite or 
Semitic ; Hermes, from uir\> ^^^^ ^^^^ 5 Dionysos, from dyan, the 



20^ LECTUEE VI. 

But while the name of Indra as the god of the sky, 
also as the god of the thnnderstorm, and the giver of 
rain, is unknown among the north-western members of 
the Aryan family, the name of another god who some- 
times acts the part of Indra (IndraA Par^anyatma), but 
is much less prominent in the Yeda, I mean Par^anya, 
must have existed before that of Indra, because two at 
least of the Aryan languages have carried it, as we shall 
see, to Germany, and to the very shores of the Baltic. 

Sometimes this Par^anya stands in the jolace of Dyaus, 
the sky. Thus we read in the Atharva-Yeda, XII. 1, 
12 :"^ '' The Earth is the mother, and I am the son of the 
Earth. Par^anya is the father ; may he help us !' ' 

In another place (XII. 1, 42) the Earth, instead of 
being the wife of Heaven or Dyaus, is called the wife of 
Par^anya. 

Now who or what is this Parf^anya ? There have been 
long controversies about himj-t- as to whether he is the 
same as Dyaus, Heaven, or the same as Indra, the suc- 
cessor of Dyaus, whether he is the god of the sky, of 
the cloud, or of the rain. 

To me it seems that this very expression, god of the 
sky, god of the cloud, is so entire an anachronism that 
we could not even translate it into Yedic Sanskrit with- 
out committing a solecism. It is true, no doubt, we 
must use our modern ways of speaking when we wish to 
represent the thoughts of the ancient world ; but we 
cannot be too much on our guard against accepting the 
dictionary representative of an ancient word for its real 

judge, and nisi, mankind ; Orpheus, from Orfa, tlie Arabic name of 
Edessa ; Prometheus, from pro and manthand, to learn. — ^A. W. 

* Muir, iv. p. 23. 

■}■ Ibid, p, 142. An excellent paper on Parganya was published by 
Biihler in 1862, " Orient und Occident," vol. i. p. 214, 



VEDIC DEITIES. 203 

counterpart. D e v a, no doubt, means ^ ^gods' ' and ^ ^god, ' ' 
and P a r ^ a n y a means ' ' cloud, ' ' but no one could say in 
Sanskrit par^anjasya deva/^, ^'the god of the 
cloud. " The god, or the divine, or transcendental element, 
does not come from without, to be added to the cloud or 
to the sky or to the earth, but it springs from the cloud 
and the sky and the earth, and is slowly elaborated into 
an independent concept. As many words in ancient 
languages have an undefined meaning, and lend them- 
selves to various purposes according to the various 
intentions of the speakers, the names of the gods also 
share in this elastic and plastic character of ancient 
speech. There are passages where Par^anya means 
cloud, there are passages where it means rain. There 
are passages where Par^anya takes the place which else- 
where is filled by Dyaus, the sky, or by Indra, the 
active god of the atmosphere. This may seem very 
wrong and very unscientific to the scientific mythologist. 
But it cannot be helped. It is the nature of ancient 
thought and ancient language to be unscientific, and 
we must learn to master it as well as we can, instead of 
finding fault with it, and complaining that our fore- 
fathers did not reason exactly as we do. 

There are passages in the Yedic hymns where Par^anya 
appears as a supreme god. He is called father, like 
Dyaus, the sky. He is called a s u r a, the living or life- 
giving god, a name peculiar to the oldest and the greatest 
gods. One poet says,* ^' He rules as god over the 
whole world ; all creatures rest in him ; he is the Hfe 
(atma) of all that moves and rests." 

Surely it is difficult to say more of a supreme god than 
what is here said of Par^anya. Yet in other hymns he 
is represented as performing his office, namely that of 
* Rig-Veda VII. 101, 6. 



204 LECTUEE YI. 

sending rain upon the earth, under the control of Mitra 
and YsiYun, who are then considered as the highest lords, 
the mightiest rulers of heaven and earth. ^ 

There are other verses, again, where par^anya occurs 
with hardly any traces of personality, but simply as a 
name of cloud or rain. 

Thus we read :f "^ Even by day the Maruts (the 
storm-gods) produce darkness with the cloud that carries 
water, when they moisten the earth." Here cloud is 
par^anya, and it is evidently used as an appellative, and 
not as a proper name. The same word occurs in the 
plural also, and we read of many par^anyas or clouds 
vivifying the earth. J 

When Devapi prays for rain in favor of his brother, 
he says :§ ^^ O lord of my prayer (B^haa^Dati), whether 
thou be Mitra or Yaru^a or Pushan, come to my sac- 
rifice ! Whether thou be together with the Adityas, 
the Yasus or the Maruts, let the cloud (par^anya) rain for 
/5kntanu." 

And again : *' Stir up the rainy cloud " (parp'anya). 

In several places it makes no difference whether we 
translate par^anya by cloud or by rain, for those who 
pray for rain, pray for the cload, and whatever may be 
the benefits of the rain, they may nearly all be called 
the benefits of the cloud. There is a curious hymn, for 
instance, addressed to the frogs who, at the beginning 
of the rains, come forth from the dry ponds, and em- 
brace each other and chatter together, and whom the 
poet compares to priests singing at a sacrifice, a not very 
complimentary remark from a poet who is himself sup- 
posed to have been a priest. Their voice is said to have 
been revived by par^anya, which we shall naturally 

* Kig-Veda V. 63, 3-6. J '^- c. L 164, 51. 

f L. c, I. 38, 9. § L. c. X. 98, 1. 



TEDIC DEITIES. 205 

translate '^ bj rain," tliougli, no doubt, the poet may 
have meant, for all we know, either a cloud, or even the 
god Par^anya himself. 

I shall try to translate one of the hymns addressed to 
Parp'anya, when conceived as a god, or at least as so 
much of a god as it was possible to be at that stage in 
the intellectual grov/th of the human race.* 

1. ''' Invoke the strong god with these songs ! praise 
Par^anya, worship him with veneration ! for he, the 
roaring bull, scattering drops, gives seed-fruit to 
plants. 

2. " He cuts the trees asunder, he kills evil spirits ; 
the whole world trembles before his mighty weapon. 
Even the guiltless flees before the powerful, when 
Par^anya thundering strikes down the evil-doers. 

3. '^ Like a charioteer, striking his horses with a whip, 
he puts forths his messenger of rain. From afar arise 
the roarings of the lion, when Par^anya makes the sky 
full of rain. 

4. ^^ The winds blow, the lightnings f fly, plants 
spring up, the sky pours. Food is produced for the 
whole world, when Parp'anya blesses the earth with his 
seed 

5. '' O Par^anya, thou at whose work the earth bows 
down, thou at whose work hoofed animals are scattered, 
thou at whose work the plants assume all forms, grant 
thou to us thy great protection ! 

6. ^'0, Maruts, give us the rain of heaven, make the 
streams of the strong horse run down ! And come thou 

* Eig-Veda V. 83. See Biihler, " Orient und Occident," vol. i. p. 
214 ; Zimmer, " Altindisclies Leben," p. 43, 

f Both Biihler (" Orient und Occident," vol. i. p. 224) and Zimmer 
(Z. 1 D. A. vii. J). 169) say that the lightning is represented as the 
son of Parf/anya in Eig-Veda YII. 101, 1. This seems doubtful. 



206 LECTUEE VI. 

hither with thy thunder, pouring out water, for thou 
(O Parp'anya) art the living god, thou art our father. 

Y. ^^ Do thou roar, and thunder, and give fruitful- 
ness ! Fly around us with thy chariot full of water ! 
Draw forth thy water-skin, when it has been opened 
and turned downward, and let the high and the low 
places become level ! 

8. '^ Draw up the large bucket, and pour it out ; let 
the streams pour forth freely ! Soak heaven and earth 
with fatness ! and let there be a good draught for the 
cows ! 

9. ^' O Par^anya, when roaring and thundering thou 
killest the evil-doers, then everything rejoices, whatever 
lives on earth. 

10. ^^ Thou hast sent rain, stop now ! Thou hast 
made the deserts passable, thou hast made plants grow 
for food, and thou hast obtained praise from men." 

This is a Yedic hymn, and a very fair specimen of 
what tliese ancient hymns are. There is nothing very 
grand and poetical about them, and yet, I say, take 
thousands and thousands of people living in our villages, 
and depending on rain for their very life, and not many 
of them will be able to compose such a prayer for rain, 
even though three thousand years have passed over our 
heads since Parp'anya was first invoked in India, l^or 
are these verses entirely without poetical conceptions and 
descriptions. Whoever has watched a real thunderstorm 
in a hot climate will recognize the truth of those quick 
sentences : ^' the winds blow, the hghtnings fly, plants 
spring up, the hoofed cattle are scattered." Nor is the 
idea vdthout a certain drastic reality, that Parp'anya 
draws a bucket of water from his well in heaven, and 
pours out skin after skin (in which water was then 
carried) down upon the earth. 



YEDIC DEITIES. 207 

There is even a moral sentiment perceptible in this 
hymn. '^ When the storms roar, and the lightnings flash 
and the rain pours down, even the guiltless trembles, 
and evildoers are struck down. ' ' Here we clearly see 
that the poet did not look upon the storm simply as an 
outbreak of the violence of nature, but that he had a 
presentiment of a higher will and power which even the 
guiltless fears ; for who, he seems to say, is entirely free 
from guilt ? 

If now we ask again, "Who is Parp'anya ? or What is 
Par^anya ? we can answer that par^anya was meant 
originally for the cloud, so far as it gives rain ; but as 
soon as the idea of a giver arose, the visible cloud became 
the outward appearance only, or the body of that giver, 
and the giver himself was somewhere else, we know not 
where. In some verses Par^anya seems to step into the 
place of Dyaus, the sky, and P^'^^thivi, the earth, is his 
wife. In other places,* however, he is the son of Dyaus 
or the sky, though no thought is given in that early 
stage to the fact that thus Par^anya might seem to be 
the husband of his mother. We saw that even the idea 
of Indra being the father of his own father did not 
startle the ancient poets beyond an exclamation that it 
was a very wonderful thing indeed. 

Sometimes Par^anya does the work of Indi-ajf the 
Jupiter Pluvius of the Yeda ; sometimes of Vayu, the 
wind, sometimes of Soma, the giver of rain. Yet with 
all this he is not Dyaus, nor Indra, nor the Maruts, nor 
Yayu, nor Soma. He stands by himself, a separate 
person, a separate god, as we should say — nay, one of 
the oldest of all the Aryan gods. 

His name, par^anya, is derived from a root par^, 

* Rig-Veda VII. 102, 1. f L. c. VHI. 6, 1. 



208 LECTURE YI. 

whicli, like its parallel forms par^ and parsh, must (I 
think) have had the meaning of sprinkling, irrigating, 
moistening. An interchange between final g^ s, and sh, 
may, no doubt, seem unusual, but it is not without parallel 
in Sanskrit. We have, for instance, the roots pi%, pin- 
gere ; pish, to rub ; -pis, to adorn (as in pe^as, noiKiXog, 
etc.) ; mrig, to rub, mWsh, to rub out, to forget ; mris, 
mulcere. 

This very root mrig forms its participle as mriBh-tSb, 
hke ya^, ishtei, and vi^, vishz^a ; nay there are roots, such 
as druh, which optionally take a final lingual or guttural, 
such as dhrut and dhruk.* 

We may therefore compare par^ in par^anya with 
such words as pWshata, pWshati, speckled, drop of 
water ;■[ also par^u, cloud, i^risni, speckled, cloud, earth ; 
and in Greek 7r|o6|(w), rreptcvog, etc.:j: 

If derived from par^, to sprinkle, Par^anya would 
have meant originally '' he who irrigates or gives rain." § 

When the different members of the Aryan family 
dispersed, they might all of them, Hindus as well as 
Greeks and Celts, and Teutons and Slaves, have carried 
that name for cloud with them. But you know that it 
happened very often that out of the commonwealth of 
their ancient language, one and the same word was 
preserved, as the case might be, not by all, but by only 
six, or five, or four, or three, or two, or even by one 

* See Max Miiller, Sanskrit Grammar, § 174, 10. 

f Cf. Gobh. Griiiya S. III. 3, 15, vidyiit — stanayitnu — pnshiteshu. 

^ TJgfgrvaladatta, in his commentary on the UnS,di-s<itras, iii, 103; 
admits the same transition of sh into g in the verb pnsh, as the ety- 
mon of pargranya, 

§ For different etymologies, see Biihler, " Orient und Occident," i. 
p. 214; Muir, " Original Sanskrit Texts," v. p. 140 ; Grassmann. in 
his Dictionary to the Eig-Veda, s. v.; Zimmer, " Zeitscrift fiir 
Deutsches Alterthum, Neue Folge, " vii. p. 164, 



TEDIO DEITIES. 209 

only of the eeven principal heirs ; and yet, as we know 
that there was no historical contact between them, after 
they had once parted from each other, long before the 
beginning of what we call history, the fact that two of 
the Aryan languages have preserved the same finished 
word with the same finished meaning, is proof sufficient 
that it belonged to the most ancient treasure of Aryan 
thought. 

Now there is no trace, at least no very clear trace, of 
Parp'anya, in Greek, or Latin, or Celtic, or even in 
Teutonic. In Slavonic, too, we look in vain, till we 
come to that almost forgotten side-branch called the 
Lettic, comprising the spoken Lituanian and LefMsh, 
and the now extinct Old Prussicm. Lituania is no 
longer an independent state, but it was once, not more 
than six centuries ago, a Grand Duchy, independent 
both of Russia and Poland. Its first Grand Duke was 
Ringold, who rnled from 1235, and his successors made 
successful conquests against the Russians. In 1368 these 
grand dukes became kings of Poland, and in 1569 the 
two countries were united. When Poland was divided 
between Russia and Prussia, part of Litnania fell to the 
former, part to the latter. There are still about one 
million and a half of people who speak Lituanian in 
Russia and Prussia, while Lettish is spoken by about 
one million in Curland and Livonia. 

The Lituanian language even as it is now spoken by 
l\\e common people, contains some extremely primitive 
grammatical forms — in some cases almost identical with 
Sanskrit. These forms are all the more curious, because 
they are bnt few in number, and the rest of the language 
has suffered much from the wear and tear of centuries. 

Now in that remote Lituanian language we find that 
our old friend Par^anya has taken refuge. There he 



310 LECTURE VI. 

lives to the present day, while even in India he is almost 
forgotten, at least in the spoken languages ; and there, 
in Litnania, not many centuries back might be heard 
among a Christianized or nearly Christianized people, 
prayers for rain, not very different from that which I 
translated to you from the Kig-Yeda. In Lituanian the 
god of thunder was called Perhunas,^ and the same 
word is still used in the sense of thunder. In Old 
Prussian, thunder was percunos, and in Lettish to the 
present day jperltons is thunder, god of thunder, f 

It was, I believe, Grimm who for the first time 
identified the Yedic Par^anya with the Old Slavonic 
Perun, the Polish Piorun, the Bohemian Peraun. These 
words had formerly been derived by Dobrovsky and 
others from the root pern, I strike. Grimm (^' Teutonic 
Mythology," Engl. transL, p. 171) showed that the 
fuller forms Perkunas, Pehrkons, and Perkunos existed 
in Lituanian, Lettish, Old Prussian, and that even the 
Mordvinians had adopted the name Porguini as that of 
their thunder-god. 

Simon Grunau, who finished his chronicle in 1521, 
speaks of three gods, as worshipped by the Old Prus- 
sians, Patollo, Patrimpo, and Perkuno, and he states 
that Perkuno was invoked '^ for storm's sake, that they 
might have rain and fair weather at the proper time, 
and thunder and lightning should not injure them.":j: 

* In order to identify Perkunas with Parg'anya, we must go an- 
other step backward, and look upon cj or g, in the root parg, as a 
weakening of an original k in park. This, however, is a frequent 
phonetic process. See Blihler, in Benfey's " Orient und Occident," 
ii. p. 717. 

I Lituanian perkun-kulke, thunder-bolt, perkuno gaisis, storm. 
See Voelkel, "Die lettischen Sprachreste," 1879, p. 23. 

\ '' Perkuno, war der dritte Abgott und man ihn anruffte um's Ge- 
witters willen, damit sie Kegen hatten und schon wetter zu seiner 



VEDIC DEITIES. 211 

Tlic following Litiianian prayer has been jjreserved to 
lis by Lasitzki :'''^ 

" Check thyself, O Percima, and do not send mis- 
fortune on my field 1 and I shall give thee this flitch." 

Among the neighbors of the Lets, the Esthonians, 
who, though nn-Aryan in language, have evidently 
learned much from their Aryan neighbors, the following 
prayer was heard, f addressed by an old peasant to their 
god Picker or Pickeii^ the god of thunder and rain, as 
late as the seventeenth century.:!: 

" Dear Thunder (woda Picker), we offer to thee an 
ox that has two horns and four cloven hoofs ; we would 
pray thee for our ploughing and sowing, that our straw 
be copper-red, our grain golden-yellow. Push elsewhere 
all the thick black clouds, over great fens, high forests, 
and wildernesses. But unto us, ploughers and sowers, 
give a fruitful season and sweet rain. Holy Thunder 
(poha Picken), guard our seed- field, that it bear good 
straw below, good ears above, and good gr?in within. "§ 

Now, I say again, I do not wish you to admire this 
primitive poetry, ]3rimitive, whether it is repeated in the 
Esthonian fens in the seventeenth century of our era, or 
sung in the valley of the Indus in the seventeenth 

Zeit, unci ihn der Donner uiid blixkein schaden thett." Cf. '' Gotte- 
sides bei den alien Preussen," Berlin, 1870, p, 23. The triad of the 
gods is called Triburti, Tryboze ; 1. c. p. 29. 

* Grimm, " Teutonic Mythology," p. 175 ; and Lasitzki (Lasicins) 
" Joannes De Rnssorum, Moscovitarum et Tartarorum religione, sacri- 
ficiis, nuptiarum et funernm ritu, Spirae Nemetum, " 1582 ; idem De 
Diis Samagitarum. 

f Grimm, 1. c. p. 17G, quoting from Joh. Gutslaff, "Kurzer Bericht 
und Unterricht von der falsch heilig genannten Bache in Liefland 
Wohhanda," Dorpat, 1644., pp. 362-364. 

\ In modern Esthonian Pitkne, the Finnish Pitcainen (?). 

§ On foreign influences in Esthonian stories, see " Ehstniche Mar- 
chen," von T. Kreutzwald, 1869, Vorwort (by Schiefner), p. iv. 



212 LECTUKE YI. 

century before otir era. Let sestlietic critics say what 
they like about these uncouth poems. I only ask you, 
Is it not worth a great many poems, to have established 
this fact, that the same god Par^anya, the god of clouds 
Poud thunder and lightning and rain, who was invoked in 
India a thousand years before India was discovered by 
Alexander, should have been remembered and believed 
in by Lituanian peasants on the frontier between East 
Prussia and Russia, not more than two hundred years 
ago, and should have retained its old name Par^anya, 
which in Sanskrit meant " showering," under the form 
of I^erkicna, which in Lituanian is a name and a name 
only, without any etymological meaning at all ; nay, 
should live on, as some scholars assure us, in an ab- 
breviated form in most Slavonic dialects, namely, in 
Old Slavonic as Perun^ in Polish as Piorun^ in Bohe- 
mian as Peraun, all meaning thunder or thunderstorm ?"^ 
Such facts strike me as if we saw the blood suddenly 
beginning to flow again through the veins of old mum- 
mies ; or as if the Egyptian statues of black granite 
were suddenly to begin to speak again. Touched by 
the rays of modern science the old words — call them 
mummies or statues — begin indeed to live again, the old 
names of gods and heroes begin indeed to speak again. 

* Grimm suggests in his "Teutonic Mythology" that Pargranya 
should be identified with the Gothic fairguni, or mountain. He im- 
gaines that from being regarded as the abode of the god it had finally 
been called by his name. Fergwnna and Virgunia, two names of moun- 
tains in Germany, are relics of the name. The name of the god, if pre- 
served in the Gothic, would have been Fairguneis ; and indeed in the Old 
Norse language Fiorgynn is the father of Frigg, the wife of Odin, and 
Fiorgynnior, the Earth-goddess, is mother of Thor. Professor Zimmer 
takes the same view. Grimm thinks that the Greeks and Eomans, by 
changing/ into h, represented Fergunni byHercynia, and, in fine, he 
traces the words &erg and hurg back to Parganya. — A. W. 



VEDIC DEITIES. 213 



All that is old becomes new, all that is new becomes old, 
and that one word, Par^anja, seems, like a charm, to 
open before onr eyes the cave or cottage in which the 
fathers of the Aryan race, our own fathers — whether 
we live on the Baltic or on the Indian Ocean — are seen 
gathered together, taking refuge from the buckets of 
Par^anya, and saying, '' Stop now, Par^anya ; thou 
hast sent rain ; thou hast made the deserts passable, and 
hast made the plants to grow ; and thou hast obtained 
praise from man." 

We have still to consider the third class of gods, in 
addition to the gods of the earth and the sky, namely 
the gods of the highest heaven, more serene in their 
character than the active and fighting gods of the air 
and the clouds, and more remote from the eyes of man, 
and therefore more mysterious in the exercise of their 
power than the gods of the earth or the air. 

The principal deity is here no doubt the bright sky 
itself, the old Dyaus, worshipped as we know by the 
Aryans before they broke up into separate people and 
languages, and surviving in Greece as Zeus, in Italy as 
Jupiter, Heaven-father, and among the Teutonic tribes 
as Tyr and Tiic. In the Yeda we saw him chiefly in- 
voked in connection with the earth, as Dyava-p^'^'thivi, 
Heaven and Earth. He is invoked by himself also, but 
he is a vanishing god, and his place is taken in most of 
the Yedic poems by the younger and more active god, 
Indra. 

Another representative of the highest heaven, as 
covering, embracing, and shielding all things, is Yaru?za, 
a name derived from the root var, to cover, and identical 
with the Greek Ouranos. This god is one of the most 
interesting creations of the Hindu mind, because though 



214 Lecture vi. 

we can still perceive the physical backgronnd from which 
he rises, the vast, starrj, brilliant expanse above, his 
features, more than those of any of the Yedic gods, have 
become completely transfigured, and he stands before ns 
as a god v\^ho watches over the world, punishes the evil- 
doer, and even forgives the sins of those who implore his 
pardon. 

I shall read you one of the hymns addressed tO' him : * 

" Let us be blessed in thy service, O Yaru^ia, for we 
always tldnk of thee and praise thee, greeting thee day 
by day, like the fires lighted on the altar, at the approach 
of the rich dawns." 2. 

^' O Yaru^ia, our guide, let us stand in thy keeping, 
thou who art rich in heroes and praised far and wide ! 
And you, un conquered sons of Aditi, deign to accept us 
as your friends, O gods !" 3. 

'' Aditya, the ruler, sent forth these rivers ; they 
follow the law of Yaru^ia. They tire not, they cease 
not ; like birds they fiy quickly everywhere." 4. 

" Take from me my sin, like a fetter, and we shall 
increase, O Yaru^a, the spring of thy law. Let not the 
thread be cut while 1 weave my song ! Let not the 
form of the workman break before the time ! 5. 

" Take far away from me this terror, Yaru'??.a ; 
Thou, O righteous king, have mercy on me ! Like as 
a rope from a calf, remove from me my sin ; for away 
from thee 1 am not master even of the twinkling of an 
eye." 6. 

''Do not strike us, Yaru?ia, with v/eapons which at 
thy will hurt the evil-doer. Let us not go where the 
light has vanished ! Scatter our enemies, that we may 
Hve." 7. 

'' We did formerly, O Yaru^a, and do now, and shall 

* Eig-Veda II. 28. 



VEDIC DEITIES. 215 

in future also, sing praises to thee, O mighty one ! For 
on thee, unconquerable hero, rest all statutes, immovable, 
as if established on a rock. " 8. 

'' Move far away from me all self- committed guilt, and 
may I not, O king, suffer for what others have com- 
mitted ! Many dawns have not yet dawned ; grant us 
to live in them, O Yaru?^z.a. " 9. 

You may have observed that in several verses of this 
hymn Yaru^a was called Aditya, or son of Aditi. Now 
Aditi means infinitude, from dita, bound, and a, not, 
that is, not bound, not limited, absolute, infinite. Aditi 
itself is now and then invoked in the Yeda, as the Be- 
yond, as what is beyond the earth and the sky, and the 
sun and the dawn — a most surprising conception in that 
early period of religious thought. More frquently, 
however, than Aditi, we meet with the Adityas, literally 
the sons of Aditi, or the gods beyond the visible earth 
and sky — in one sense, the infinite gods. One of them 
is Yaru^a, others Mitra and Aryaman (Bhaga, Daksha, 
Am^a), most of them abstract names, though pointing to 
heaven and the solar light of heaven as their first, though 
almost forgotten source. 

When Mitra and Yaru^a are invoked together, we 
can still perceive dimly that they were meant originally 
for day and night, light and darkness. But in their 
more personal and so to say dramatic aspect, day and 
night appear in the Yedic mythology as the two A^'vins, 
the two horsemen. 

Aditi, too, the infinite, still shows a few traces of her 
being originally connected ^\dth the boundless Dawn ; 
but again, in her more personal and dramatic character, 
the Dawn is praised by the Yedic poets as Ushas, the 
Greek Eos, the beautiful maid of the morning, loved by 
the A^vins, loved by the sun, but vanishing before him 



216 LECTUHE VI. 

at the very moment wlien he tries to embrace her with 
his golden rays. The sun himself, whom we saw re- 
flected several times before in some of the divine person- 
ifications of the air and the skj and even of the earth, 
appears once more in his full personality, as the sun of 
the sky, under the names of Surya (Helios), SavitW, 
Pushan, and Yish?iu, and many more. 

You see from all tliis how great a mistake it would be 
to attempt to reduce the whole of Aryan mythology to 
solar concepts, and to solar concepts only. We have 
seen how largely the earth, the air, and the sky have 
each contributed their share to the earhest rehgious and 
mythological treasury of the Yedic Aryans. ^Neverthe- 
less, the Sun occupied in that ancient collection of Aryan 
thought, which we call Mythology, the same central 
and commanding position which, under different names, 
it still holds in our own thoughts. 

What we call the Morning, the ancient Aryans called 
the Sun or the Dawn ; ^' and there is no solemnity so 
deep to a rightly-thinking creature as that of the Dawn. ' ' 
(These are not my words, but the words of one of our 
greatest poets, one of the truest worshippers of Nature — 
John Ruskin.) What we call Noon, and Evening, and 
Night, what we call Spring and Winter, what we call 
Year, and Time, and Life, and Eternity — all this the 
ancient Aryans called Sun. And yet wise people won- 
der and say. How curious that the ancient Aryans should 
have had so many solar myths. Why, every time we 
say " Good-morning, '^ we commit a solar myth. Every 
poet who sings about ^' the May driving the Winter 
from the field again" commits a solar myth. Every 
'^ Christmas number" of our newspapers — ringing out 
the old year and ringing in the new — ^is brimful of solar 
myths. Be not afraid of solar myths, but whenever in 



VEDIC DEITIES. 217 

ancient mythology yon meet with a name that, according 
to the strictest phonetic rules (for this is a sine qua non), 
can he traced back to a word meaning sun, or dawn, or 
morning, or night, or spring or winter, accept it for 
what it was meant to be, and do not be greatly surprised, 
if a story told of a solar eponymos was originally a solar 
myth. 

1^0 one has more strongly protested against the ex- 
travagances of comparative mythologists in changing 
everything into solar legends, than I have ; but if I read 
some of the arguments brought forward against this new 
science, I confess they remind me of nothing so much as 
of the arguments brought forward, centuries ago, against 
the existence of Antipodes ! People then appealed to 
what is called Common Sense, which ought to teach 
everybody that Antipodes could not possibly exist, be- 
cause they would tumble off. The best answer that 
astronomers could give, was, ^ ^ Go and see. ' ' And I 
can give no better answer to those learned skeptics who 
try to ridicule the Science of Comparative Mythology — 
'^ Go and see !" that is, go and read the Yeda, and 
before you have finished the first Ma7i(^ala, I can promise 
you, you will no longer shake your wise heads at solar 
myths, whether in India, or in Greece, or in Italy, or 
even in England, where we see so little of the sun, and 
talk all the more about the weather — that is, about a 
solar myth. 

"We have thus seen from the hymns and prayers 
preserved to us in the Rig- Yeda, how a large number of 
so-called Devas, bright and sunny beings, or gods, were 
called into existence, how the whole world was peopled 
with them, and every act of nature, whether on the 
earth or in the air or in the highest heaven, ascribed to 
their agency. When we say it thunders, they said 



218 LECTURE Vi. 

Indra thunders ; when we say, it rains, they said 
Par^anya pours out his buckets ; when we say, it dawns, 
they said the beautiful Ushas appears like a dancer, 
displaying her splendor ; when we say^ it grows dark, 
they said Surya unharnesses his steeds. The whole of 
nature was alive to the poets of the Yeda, the presence 
of the gods was felt everywhere, and in that sentiment 
of .the presence of the gods there was a germ of relig- 
ious morality, sufficiently strong, it would seem, to 
restrain people from committing as it were before the 
eyes of their gods what they were ashamed to commit 
before the eyes of men. When speaking of Yaru^a, 
the old god of the sky, one poet says :* 

'^ Yarm^a, the great lord of these worlds, sees as if he 
were near. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he 
goes to lie down or to get up, what two people sitting 
together whisper to each other. King Yaru^a knows it, 
he is there as the third, f This earth too belongs to 
Yaru^a, the King, and this wide sky with its ends far 
apart. The two seas (the sky and the ocean) are 
Yaru^a's loins ; he is also contained in this small drop 
of water. He who should flee far beyond the sky, even 
he would not be rid of Yaru?2.a, the King. ± His spies 
proceed from heaven toward this world ; with thousand 
eyes they overlook this earth. King Yaru^a sees all 
this, what is between heaven and earth, and what is 
beyond. He has counted the twinklings of the eyes of 
men. As a player throws down the dice, he settles all 

* Atharva-Veda IV. 16. 

t Psalm cxsxix. 1, 2, "O Lord, thou hast searclied me and known 
me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou under- 
standest my thought afar off." 

X Psalm cxxxix. 9, "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell 
in the uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me, 
and thy right hand shall hold me," 



VEDIC DEITIES. 210 

things (irrevocably). May all thy fatal snares which 
stand spread ont seveji by seven and threefold, catch the 
man who tells a lie, may they pass by him who speaks 
the truth." 

Yon see this is as beantifnl, and in some respects as 
true, as anything in the Psalms. And yet we know that 
there never was snch a Deva, or god, or such a thing 
as Yarn^ia. We know it is a mere name, meaning 
originally '' covering or all-embracing," which was 
applied to the visible starry sky, and afterward, by a 
23rocess perfectly intelligible, developed into the name 
of a Being, endowed with human and superhuman 
qualities. 

And what applies to Yaru^^a applies to all the other 
gods of the Yeda and the Yedic religion, whether three 
in number, or thirty -three, or, as one poet said, ^' three 
thousand three hundred and thirty-nine gods,"* They 
are all but names, quite as much as Jupiter and Apollo 
and Minerva ; in fact, quite as much as all the gods of 
every religion who are called by such appellative titles. 

Possibly, if any one had said this during the Yedic 
age in India, or even during the Periklean age in 
Greece, he would have been called, like Sokrates, a 
blasphemer or an atheist. And yet nothing can be 
clearer or truer, and we shall see that some of the poets 
of the Yeda too, and, still more, the later Yedantic 
philosopher, had a clear insight that it was so. 

Only let us be careful in the use of that phrase ^Mt is 
a mere name." No name is a mere name. Every 
name was originally meant for something ; only it often 
failed to express what it was meant to express, and then 
became a weak or an empty name, or what we then call 
"a mere name." So it was with these names of the 

* Eig-veda III. 9, 9 ; X. 52, 6. 



220 LECTURE yl. 

Yedic gods. Tliey were all meant to express tlie 
Beyond^ the Invisible behind the Yisible, the Infinite 
within the Finite, the Supernatural above the Natural, 
the Divine, omnipresent, and omnipotent. They failed 
in expressing what, by its very nature, must always 
remain inexpressible. But that Inexpressible itself re- 
mained, and in spite of all these failures, it never suc- 
cumbed, or vanished from the mind of the ancient 
thinkers and poets, but always called for nev/ and better 
names, nay calls for them even now, and will call for 
them to the very end of man's existence upon earth. 



LECTURE YII. 

YEDA AISTD VEDAISTTA. 

I DO not wonder tliat I should have been asked by 
some of my hearers to devote part of my last lecture 
to answering the question, how the Yedic Hterature 
could have been composed and preserved, if writing 
was unknown in India before 500 e.g., while the hymns 
of the Rig-Yeda are said to date from 1500 b.o. Class- 
ical scholars naturally ask what is the date of our oldest 
Mss. of the Rig-Yeda, and what is the evidence on which 
so high an antiquity is assigned to its contents. I shall 
try to answer this question as well as I can, and I shall 
begin with a humble confession that the oldest mss. of 
the Rig-Yeda, known to us at present, date not from 
1500 B.C., but from about 1600 a.d. 

We have therefore a gap of three tliousand years, 
which it will require a strong arch of argument to bridge 
over. 

But that is not all. 

You may know how, in the beginning of this century, 
when the age of the Homeric poems was discussed, a 
Gernian scholar, Frederick August Wolf, asked two 
momentous questions : 

1. At what time did the Greeks first become ac- 
quainted with the alphabet and use it for inscriptions 
on public monuments, coins, shields, and for contracts, 
both public and private ? ^ 

* On the early use of letters for public inscriptions, see Hayman, 



322 LECTURE VII. 

2. At what time did the Greeks first think of using: 
writing for literary purposes, and what materials did 
they employ for that pni'pose ? 

These two questions and the answers they elicited 
threw quite a new hght on the nebulous periods of 
Greek literature. A fact more firmly estabHshed than 
any other in the ancient history of Greece is that the 
lonians learned the alphabet from the Phenicians. The 
lonians always called their letters Phenician letters,^ 
and the very name of Alphabet was a Phenician word. 
We can well understand that the Phenicians should have 
taught the lonians in Asia Minor a knowledge of the 
alphabet, partly for commercial purposes, i.e. for making 
contracts, partly for enabling them to use those useful 
little sheets, called Periplus, or Circuranamgations^ 
which at that time were as precious to sailors as maps 
were to the adventurous seamen of the middle ages. 
But from that to a written hterature, in our sense of the 
word, there is still a wide step. It is well known that 
the Germans, particularly in the North, had their Runes 
for inscriptions on tombs, goblets, public monuments, 
but not for hterary pui-poses.f Even if a few lonians at 
Miletus and other centres of political and commercial 
life acquired the art of writing, where could they find 
writing materials ? and still more important, where 
could they find readers ? The lonians, when they began 
to write, had to be satisfied with a hide or pieces of 
leather, which they called dij^hthera^ and until that was 

Journal of Philology, 1879, pp. Ml, 142, 150 ; Hicks, " Manual of Greek 
Historical Inscriptions," pp. 1 seqq. 

* Herod, (v. 59) says : " I saw Phenician letters on certain tripods 
in a temple of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes in Boeotia, the most of 
them like the Ionian letters." 

•(• Munchj "Die Nordisch GermanischenYolker, "p. 240. 



YEDA AND VEDANTA. 223 

brouglit to tlie perfection of velliiiri or parclimentj tlio 
occupation of an author cannot have been very agree- 
able. ^ 

So far as we know at present the lonians began to 
write about the middle of the sixtli century b.c. ; and, 
whatever may have been said to the contrary, Wolf's 
dictuf)i still holds good that with them the beginning of 
a written literature was the same as the beginning of 
prose writing. 

Writing at that time was an effort, and such an effort 
was made for some great purpose only. Hence the first 
written skins were what we should call Murray's Hand- 
books, called Periegesis or Periodos^ or, if treating of 
sea-voyages, Perijplus, that is, guide-books, books to 
lead travellers round a country or round a town. Con- 
nected with these itineraries were the accounts of the 
foundations of cities, the Ktisis. Such books existed in 
Asia Minor during the sixth and fifth centuries, and 
their writers were called by a general term, Logographi^ 
or XoyiQi or \oyoT,oioi^\ as opposed to aoi^oi^ the poets. 
They were the forerunners of the Greek historians, and 
Herodotus (M3 b.c), the so-called father of history, 
made frequent use of their works. 

The whole of this incipient literary activity belonged 
to Asia Minor. From "" Guides through towns and 
countries,' ' literature seems to have spread at an early 
time to Guides through life, or philosophical dicta, such 



* Herod, (v. 58) says : ' ' The lonians from of old call /3ii/?Aoc dLc^BipaL, 
because once, in default of the former, they used to employ the lat- 
ter. And even down to my own time, many of the barbarians write 
on such diphtherce." 

t Hekatseos and Kadmos of Miletos (520 b. c. ), Charon of Lampsa- 
kos (504 B, c), Xanthos the Lydian (463 e.g.), Pherekydes of Lero- 
(480 B, c), Hellanikos of Mitylene (450 b. c), etc. 



224: LECTUKE VII. 

as are ascribed to Anaximander tlie Ionian (610-547 
B.o.^'), and Plierekjdes the Syrian (540 e.g.). These 
names carry ns into the broad daylight of history, for 
Anaximander was the teacher of Anaximenes, Anaxi- 
menes of Anaxagoras, and Anaxagoras of Perikles. At 
that time writing was a recognized art, and its cultiva- 
tion had been rendered possible chiefly through trade 
with Egypt and the importation of papyros. In the 
time of JEschylos (500 b.o.) the idea of writing had 
become so familiar that he could use it again and again 
in poetical metaphors, f and there seems little reason 
why we should doubt that both Peisistratos (528 b.c.) 
and Polykrates of Samos (523 e.g.) were among the first 
collectors of Greek manuscripts. 

In this manner the simple questions asked by Wolf 
helped to reduce the history of ancient Greek literature 
to some kind of order, particularly with reference to its 
first beginnings. 

It would therefore seem but reasonable that the two 
first questions to be asked by the students of Sanskrit 
literature should have been : 

1. At what time did the people of India become 
acquaiiited with an alphabet ? 

2. At what time did they first use such alphabet for 
literary purposes ? 

Curiously enough, however, these questions remained 
in abeyance for a long time, and, as a consequence, it 
was impossible to introduce even the first elements of 
order into the chaos of ancient Sanskrit literature.:]: 

I can here state a few facts only. There are no 

* Lewis, "Astronomy," p. 92. 
f See Hayman, Journal of Philology, 1879, p. 139. 
X See M. M., "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature," pp. 497 
seqq., " On the Introduction of "Writing in India." 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 225 

inscriptions to be found anywhere in India before the 
middle of the third century b.c. These inscriptions are 
Buddhist, put up during the reign of A.soka, the grand- 
son of ^ndragupta, who was the contemporary of 
Seleucus, and at whose court in Patalibotlira Megas- 
thenes lived as ambassador of Seleucus. Here, as you 
see, we are on historical ground. In fact, there is little 
doubt that A,soka, the king who put up these inscrip- 
tions in several parts of his vast kingdom, reigned from 
259-222 B.C. 

These inscriptions are w^ritten in two alphabets — one 
written from right to left, and clearly derived from an 
Aramaean, that is, a Semitic alphabet ; the other written 
from left to right, and clearly an adaptation, and an 
artificial or systematic adaptation, of a Semitic alphabet 
to the requirements of an Indian language. That 
second alphabet became the source of all Indian alpha- 
bets, and of many alphabets carried chiefly by Buddhist 
teachers far beyond the limits of India, though it is 
possible that the earliest Tamil alpliabet may have been 
directly derived from the same Semitic source which 
supplied both the dextrorsum and the sinistrorsicm 
alphabets of India. 

Here then we have the first fact — viz. that waiting, 
even for monumental purposes, was unknown in India 
before the third century e.g. 

But writing for commercial purposes was known in 
India before that time. Megasthenes was no doubt quite 
right when he said that tlie Indians did not know 
letters,* that their laws were not written, and that they 
administered justice from memory. But [N'earchus, the 
admiral of Alexander the Great, w^ho sailed down tlie 
Indus (325 e.g.), and was therefore brought in contact 
* M. M., " History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, " p. 515. 



226 iiECTUEE YII. 

with tile mercliarits frequenting tlie maritime stations of 
India, was probably equally right in declaring that '' the 
Indians wrote letters on cotton that had been well beaten 
together." These were no doubt commercial docu- 
ments, contracts, it may be, with Phenician or Egyptian 
captains, and they would prove nothing as to the ex- 
istence in India at that time of what we mean by a 
written literature. In fact, Nearchus himself affirms 
what Megasthenes said after him, namely that ^'the 
laws of the sophists in India were not written." If, 
at the same time, the Greek travellers in India speak of 
mile-stones, and of cattle marked by the Indians with 
various signs and also with numbers, all this .would 
perfectly agree with what we know from other sources, 
that though the art of writing may have reached India 
before the time of Alexander's conquest, its employment 
for hterary purposes cannot date from a much earlier 
time. 

Here then we are brought face to face with a most 
startling fact. Writing was unknown in India before 
the fourth century before Christ, and yet we are asked 
to believe that the Yedic literature in its three well- 
defined periods, the Mantra, Brahma?ia, and Sutra 
periods, goes back to at least a thousand years before 
our era. 

Kow the Kig-Yeda alone, which contains a collection 
of ten books of hymns addressed to various deities, 
consists of 1017 (1028) poems, 10,580 verses, and about 
163,826 words.* How were these poems composed — 
for they are composed in very perfect metre — and how, 
after having been composed, were they handed down 
from 1500 before Christ to 1500 after Christ, the time 
to which most of our best Sanskrit mss. belong ? 
* M. M., " Hibbert Lectures," p. 153. 



YEDA AND VEDANTA. 227 

Entirely hy memory.^ This may sound startling, 
l[)ut— what will sound still more startling, and yet is a 
fact that can easily be ascertained by anybody who 
doubts it— at the present moment, if every ms. of the 
Kig-Yeda were lost, we should bo able to recover the 
whole of it— from, the memory of the /ft-otriyas in India. 
These native students learn the Yeda by heart, and they 
learn it from the mouth of their Guru, never from a 
MS., still less from my printed edition — and after a 
time they teach it again to their pupils. 

I have had such students in my room at Oxford, who 
not only could repeat these hymns, but who repeated 
them with the proper accents (for the Yedic Sanskrit 
has accents like Greek), nay, who, when looking through 
my printed edition of the Rig-Yeda, could point out a 
misprint without the slightest hesitation. 

I can tell you more. There are hardly any various 
readings in ournss. of the Eig-Yeda, but various schools 
in India have their own readings of certain passages, and 
they hand down those readings with great care. So, 
instead of collating mss., as we do in Greek and Latin, 
I have asked some friends of mine to collate those Yedic 
students, who carry their own Eig-Yeda in their memory, 
and to let me have the various readings from these living 
authorities. 

Here then we are not dealing with theories, but with 
facts, which anybody may verify. The whole of tlie 
Eig-Yeda, and a great deal more, still exists at the 
present moment in the oral tradition of a number of 

* Learning was anciently preserved by memory. The Jewish, or 
rather Ohaldaic Kabala, or Tradition was not written for many 
centuries. The Druids of ancient Britain preserved their litanies in 
the same way, and to a Bard a good memory was indispensable, or he 
would have been refused initiation,— A. W, 



22S LECTURE YII. 

scholars who, if they liked, conld write down every 
letter, and every accent, exactly as we find them in oiir 
old Mss. Of course, this learning by heart is carried on 
under a strict discipline ; it is, in fact, considered as a 
sacred duty. A native friend of mine, liimseK a very 
distinguished Yedic scholar, tells me that a boy, who is to 
be brought up as a student of the Rig-Yeda, has to spend 
about eight years in the house of his teacher. He has 
to learn ten books : first, the hymns of the Rig-Yeda ; 
then a prose treatise on sacrifices, called the Brahma^a ; 
then the so-called Forest-book or Ara^iyaka ; then the 
rules on domestic ceremonies ; and lastly, six treatises 
on pronunciation, grammar, etymology, metre, astron- 
omy, and ceremonial. 

These ten books, it has been calculated, contain nearly 
30,000 lines, each hue reckoned as thirty -two syllables. 

A pupil studies every day during the eight years of 
his theological apprenticeship, except on the holidays, 
which are called '^non -reading days." There being 360 
days in a lunar year, the eight years would give him 2880 
days. Deduct from this 384 holidays, and you get 2496 
working days during the eight years. If you divide the 
number of lines, 30,000, by the number of working 
days, you get about twelve hues to be learned each day, 
though much time is taken uj), in addition, for practis- 
ing and rehearsing what has been learned before. 

IS'ow this is the state of things at present, though I 
doubt whether it will last much longer, and I always 
impress on my friends in India, and therefore impress 
on those also who will soon be settled as civil servants 
in India, the duty of trying to learn all that can still be 
learned from those living libraries. Much ancient San- 
skrit lore will be lost forever wlien that race of /^rotriyas 
becomes extinct. 



VEDA AKD YEDAKTA. 229 

But now let ns look back. About a thousand years 
ago a Chinese of the name of I-tsing, a Buddhist, went 
to Indra to learn Sanskrit, in order to be able to trans- 
late some of the sacred books of his own rehgion, which 
were originally written in Sanskrit, into Chinese. He 
left China in 671, arrived at Tamralipti in India in 673, 
and went to the great College and Monastery of Nalanda, 
where he studied Sanskrit. He returned to Cliina in 
695, and died in 703.* 

In one of his works which we still possess in Chinese, 
he gives an account of what he saw in India, not only 
among his own co-religionists, the Buddhists, but like- 
wise among the Brahmans.f 

Of the Buddhist priests he says that after they have 
learned to recite the five and the ten precepts, they are 
taught the 400 hymns of M-itriJcetsiy and afterward the 
150 hymns of the same poet. When they are able to 
recite these, they begin the study of the Sutras of their 
Sacred Canon. They also learn by heart the (rataka- 
mala,I which gives an account of Buddha in former 
states of existence. Speaking of what he calls the 
islands of the Southern Sea, which he visited after 
leaving India, I-tsing says : '' There are more than ten 
islands in the South Sea, There both priests and lay- 
men recite the 6^atakamala, as they recite the hymns 
mentioned before ; but it has not yet been translated into 
Chinese. ' ' 



* See my article on the date of the Kasika in the Indian Anilquary, 
1880, p. 305. 

f The translation of the most important passages in I-tsing' s work 
•was made for me by one of vaj Jaj)anese puioils, K. Kasawara. 

:j: See Bunyiu Nanjio's "Catalogue of the Chinese Tripi^aka," p. 
372, where Aryasiira, who must have lived before 43-i a.d., is men- 
tioned as the author of the " (ratakamalu." 



230 LECTUEE VII. 

One of these stories, lie proceeds to say, was versified 
bj a king (^i6-zliili) and set to music, and was per- 
formed before tlie public with a band and dancing — 
evidently a Buddhist mystery play. 

I-tsing then gives a short account of the system of 
education. Children, he says, learn the forty-nine 
letters and the 10,000 compound letters when they are 
six years old, and generally finish them in half a year. 
This corresponds to about 300 verses, each ^loka of 
thirty-two syllables. It was originally taught by 
Mahesvara. At eight years, children begin to learn 
the grammar of Pamni, and know it after about eight 
months. It consists of 1000 ^lokas, called Sutras. ■ 

Then follows the list of roots (dhatu) and the three 
appendices (khila), consisting again of 1000 ^lokas. 
Boys begin the three appendices when they are ten 
years old, and finish them in three years. 

When they have reached the age of fifteen, they 
begin to study a commentary on the grammar (Sutra), 
and spend five years on learning it. And here I-tsing 
gives the following advice to his countrymen, many of 
whom came to India to learn Sanskrit, but seem to have 
learned it very imperfectly. ^^ If men of China," he 
writes, '^ go to India, wishing to study there, they 
should first of all learn these grammatical works, and 
then only other subjects ; if not, they wiU merely 
waste their labor. These works should be learned 
by heart. But this is suited for men of high quality 
only. . . . They should study hard day and night, 
without letting a moment pass for idle repose. They 
should be like Confucius, through whose hard study the 
binding of his Yih-king was three times cut asunder, 
being worn away ; and Hke Sui-shih, who used to read 
a book repeatedly one hundred times." Then follows a 



VEDA AKB VEDAKTA. 231 

remark, more intelligible in Chinese than in English : 
^' The hairs of a bnll are connted by thousands, the horn 
of a nnicorn is only one." 

I-tsing then speaks of the high degree of perfection to 
which the memory of these students attained, both 
among Buddhists and heretics. '' Such men,'' he says, 
^' could commit to memory the contents of two volumes, 
learning them only once. ' ' 

And then turning to the heretics^ or what we should 
call the orthodox Brahmans, he says : ^^ The Brahma^as 
are regarded throughout the five divisions of India as 
the most respectable. They do not walk with the other 
three castes, and other mixed classes of people are still 
further dissociated from them. They revere their 
Scriptures, the four Yedas, containing about 100,000 
verses. . . . The Yedas are handed down from 
mouth to mouth, not written on paper. There are in 
every generation some intelligent Brahmans who can 
recite those 100,000 verses. ... I myself sav\^ such 
men.'' 

Here then we have an eye-witness who, in the seventh 
century after Christ, visited India, learned Sanskrit, and 
spent about twenty years in different monasteries — a 
man who had no theories of his own about oral tradition, 
but who, on the contrary, as coming from China, was 
quite familiar with the idea of a written, nay, of a printed 
literature : and yet what does he say ? '^ The Yedas are 
not written on paper, but handed down from mouth to 
mouth. ' ' 

Now, 1 do not quite agree here with 1-tsing. At all 
events, we must not conclude from what he says that 
there existed no Sanskrit mss. at all at his time. We 
know they existed. We know that in the first century 
of our era Sanskrit isrss. were carried from India to 



232 LECTUEE TIL 

China, and translated there. Most likely therefore there 
were mss. of the Yeda also in existence. But I-tsing, 
for all that, was right in supposing that these mss. were 
not allowed to be used bj students, and that they had 
always to learn the Yeda by heart and from the mouth 
of a properly qualified teacher. The very fact that in 
the later law-books severe punishments are threatened 
against persons who copy the Yeda or learn it from a 
MSS., shows that mss. existed, and that their existence 
interfered seriously with the ancient privileges of the 
Brahmans, as the only legitimate teachers of their sacred 
scriptm'es. 

If now, after having heard this account of I-tsing, we 
go back for about another thousand years, we shall feel 
less skeptical in accepting the evidence which we find in 
the so-called Pratisakhyas, that is, collections of rules 
which, so far as we know at present, go back to the fifth 
century before our era, and which tell us almost exactly 
the same as what we can see in India at the present 
moment, namely that the education of children of the 
three twice-born castes, the Brahma??.as, Kshatriyas, and 
Yai^yas, consisted in their passing at least eight years in 
the house of a Guru, and learning by heart the ancient 
Yedic hymns. 

The art of teaching had even at that early time been 
reduced to a perfect system, and at that time certainly 
there is not the slightest trace of anything, such as a 
book, or skin, or parchment, a sheet of paper, pen or 
ink, being known even by name to the people of India ; 
while every expression connected with what we should 
call literature, points to a literature (we cannot help 
using that word) existing in memory only, and being 
handed down with the most scrupulous care by means 
of oral tradition. 



VEDA AND VEDAHTA. 233 

I had to enter into these details because I know that, 
with our ideas of Hterature, it requires an effort to 
imagine the bare possibiHtj of a large amount of poetry, 
and still more of prose, existing in any but a written 
form. And yet here too we only see what we see else- 
where, namely that man, before the great discoveries of 
civilization were made, was able by greater individual 
efforts to achieve what to us, accustomed to easier con- 
trivances, seems almost impossible. So-called savages 
were able to chip flints, to get fire by rubbing sticks of 
wood, which baffles our handiest workmen. Are we to 
suppose that, if they wished to preserve some songs 
which, as they believed, had once secured them the 
favor of their gods, had brought rain from heaven, or 
led them on to victory, they would have found no 
means of doing so ? We have only to read such accounts 
as, for instance, Mr. William Wyatt Gill has given us 
in his '^ Historical Sketches of Savage Life in Poly- 
nesia,"* to see how anxious even savages are to pre- 
serve the records of their ancient heroes, kings, and 
gods, particularly when the dignity or nobility of certain 
famihes dejDends on these songs, or when they contain 
what might be called the title-deeds to large estates. 
And that the Yedic Indians were not the only savages 
of antiquity who discovered the means of preserving a 
large literature by means of oral tradition, we may learn 
from Caesar, f not a very credulous witness, who tells us 
that the '^ Druids were said to know a large number of 
verses by heart ; that some of them spent twenty years 
in learning them, and that they considered it wrong to 
commit them to writing' ' — exactly the same story which 
we hear in India. 

* Wellington, 1880. [p. 506. 

f De Bello Gall. vi. li ; " History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature," 



234 LECTURE YII. 

We must return once more to the question of dates. 
We have traced tlie existence of the Yeda, as handed 
down by oral tradition, from our days to the days of 
I-tsing in the seventh century after Christ, and again 
to the period of the Prati<sakhyas, in the fifth centmy 
before Christ. 

In that fifth century b.c. took place the rise of Bud- 
dhism, a rehgion built up on the ruins of the Yedic 
religion, and founded, so to say, on the denial of the 
divine authority ascribed to the Yeda by all orthodox 
Brahmans. 

Whatever exists, therefore, of Yedic literature must 
be accommodated within the centuries preceding the rise 
of Buddhism, and if I tell you that there are three 
periods of Yedic hterature to be accommodated, the 
third presupposing the second, and the second the first, 
and that even that first period presents us with a collec- 
tion, and a systematic collection of Yedic hymns, I 
think you will agree with me that it is from no desire 
for an extreme antiquity, but simply from a respect for 
facts, that students of the Yeda have come to the con- 
clusion that these hymns, of which the mss. do not carry 
us back beyond the fiiteenth centmy after Christ, took 
theii' origin in the fifteenth century before Christ. 

One fact I must mention once more, because I think 
it may carry conviction even against the stoutest skepti- 
cism. 

I mentioned that the earhest inscriptions discovered 
in India belong to the reign of King A^oka, the grand- 
son of .^ndragupta, who reigned from 259-222 before 
Christ. What is the language of those inscriptions ? 
Is it the Sanskrit of the Yedic hymns ? Certainly not. 
Is it the later Sanskrit of the Brahma7^as and Sutras ? 



VEDA Al^D VEDANTA. 235 

Certainly not. These inscriptions are written in tlie 
local dialects as then spoken in India, and these local 
dialects differ from the grammatical Sanskrit about as 
much as Italian does from Latin. 

What follows from this ? First, that the archaic 
Sanskrit of the Yeda had ceased to be spoken before 
the third century b.c. Secondly, that even the later 
grammatical Sanskrit was no longer spoken and under- 
stood by the people at large ; that Sanskrit therefore 
had ceased, nay, we may say, had long ceased to be the 
spoken language of the country when Buddhism arose, 
and that therefore the youth and manhood of the ancient 
Yedic language lie far beyond the period that gave 
birth to the teaching of Buddha, who, though he may 
have known Sanskrit, and even Yedic Sanskrit, insisted 
again and again on the duty that liis disciples should 
preach his doctrines in the language of the people whom 
they wished to benefit. 

And now, when the time allotted to me is nearly at 
an end, I find, as it always happens, that I have not 
been able to say one half of what I hoped to say as to 
the lessons to be learned by us in India, even with regard 
to this one branch of human knowledge only, the study 
of the origin of religion. I hope, however, I may have 
succeeded in showing you the entirely new aspect which 
the old problem of the theogony, or the origin and 
growth of the Devas or gods, assumes from the light 
thrown upon it by the Yeda. Instead of positive the- 
ories, we now have positive facts, such as you look for 
in vain anywhere else ; and though there is still a con- 
siderable interval between the Devas of the Yeda, even 
in their highest form, and such concepts as Zeus, Apol- 
lon, and Athene, yet the chief riddle is solved, and we 



336 LECTUEE VII. 

know now at last what sfcuft' tlie gods of the ancient world 
were made of. 

Bnt this theogonic process is but one side of the 
ancient Yedic religion, and there are two other sides of 
at least the same importance and of even a deeper in- 
terest to ns. 

There are in fact three religions in the Yeda, or, if I 
may say so, three naves in one great temple, reared, as 
it were, before onr eyes by poets, prophets, and philoso- 
phers. Here too we can watch the work and the work- 
men. We have not to deal with hard formulas only, 
with unintelligible ceremonies, or petrified fetiches. Wq 
can see how the human mind arrives by a perfectly 
rational process at all its later irrationalities. This is 
what distinguishes the Yeda from all other Sacred 
Books. Much, no doubt, in the Yeda also, and in the 
Yedic ceremonial, is already old and imintelligible, hard, 
and petrified. But in many cases the development of 
names and concepts, their transition from the natural to 
the supernatural, from the individual to the general, is 
still going on, and it is for that very reason that we find 
it so difficult, nay ahnost impossible, to translate the 
growing thoughts of the Yeda into the full-grown and 
more than full-grown language of oui' time. 

Let us take one of the oldest words for god in the 
Yeda, such as d e v a, the Latin deus. The dictionaries tell 
you that d e v a means god and gods, and so, no doubt, 
it does. But if we always translated d e v a in the Yedic 
hymns by god, we should not be translating, but com- 
pletely transforming the thoughts of the Yedic poets. 
I do not mean only that our idea of God is totally 
different from the idea that was intended to be expressed 
by d e V a ; but even the Greek and Roman concept of 
gods would be totally inadequate to convey the thoughts 



TEDA AKD VEDAKTA. 937 

imbedded in the Yedic deva. Deva meant originally 
bright, and nothing else. Meaning bright, it was con- 
stantly used of the sky, the stars, the sim, the dawn, the 
day, the spring, the rivers, the earth ; and when a poet 
wished to speak of all of these by one and the same 
word — by what we should call a general term — he called 
them D e V a s. When that had been done, Deva did no 
longer mean '^ the Bright ones," but the name compre- 
hended all the qualities which the sky and the sun and 
the dawn shared in common, excluding only those that 
were peculiar to each. 

Here you see how, by the simplest process, the 
D e V a s, the bright ones, might become and did become 
the D e V a s, the heavenly, the kind, the powerful, the 
invisible, the immortal— and, in the end, something 
very like the deot (or dii) of Greeks and Romans. 

In this way one Beyond, the Beyond of N^ature, was 
built up in the ancient religion of the Yeda, and peopled 
with Devas, and Asuras, and Yasus, and Adityas, all 
names for the bright solar, celestial, diurnal, and vernal 
powers of nature, without altogether excluding, how- 
ever, even the dark and unfriendly powers, those of the 
night, of the dark clouds, or of winter, capable of mis- 
chief, but always destined in the end to succumb to the 
valor and strength of their bright antagonists. 

We now come to the second nave of the Yedic temple, 
the second Beyond that was dimly perceived, and grasped 
and named by the ancient Rishis, namely the world of 
the Departed Spirits.* 

* See De Coulanges, " The Ancient City," Book I. U. " We find 
this worship of the dead among the Hellenes, among the Latins, 
among the Sabines, among the Etruscans ; we also find it among the 
Aryas of India. Mention is made of it in the hymns of the Eig-Veda. 



LECtUHE Til. 



There was in India, as elsewhere, another very early 
faith, springing up naturally in the hearts of the people, 
that their fathers and mothers, when they departed this 
life, departed to a Beyond, wherever it might be, either 
in the East from whence all the bright Devas seemed 
to come, or more commonly in the West, the land to 
which they seemed to go, called in the Yeda the realm 
of Yama or the setting sun. The idea that beings which 
once had been, could ever cease to be, had not yet 
entered their minds ; and from the belief that their 
fathers existed somewhere, though they could see them 
no more, there arose the belief in another Beyond, and 
the germs of another religion. 

ISTor was the actual power of the fathers quite imper- 
ceptible or extinct even after their death. Their pres- 
ence continued to be felt in the ancient laws and customs 
of the family, most of which rested on their will and 
their authority. While their fathers were ahve and 
strong, their will was law ; and when, after their death, 
doubts or disputes arose on points of law or custom, it 
was but natural that the memory aud the authority of 
the fathers should be appealed to to settle such points — 
that the law should still be their will. 



It is spoken of in tlie Laws of Mami as the most ancient worship 
among men, . . . Before men had any notion of Indra or of Zeus, 
they adored the dead ; they feared them, and addressed them prayers. 
It seems that the religions sentiment began in this way. It was per- 
haps while looking upon the dead that man first conceived the idea 
of the snpernatnral, and to have a ho]3e beyond what he saw. Death 
was the first mystery, and it placed man on the track of other mys- 
teries. It raised his thoughts from the visible to the invisible, from 
the transitory to the eternal, from the human to the divine." 

The sacred fire represented the ancestors, and therefore was revered 
and kept carefully from profanation by the presence of a stranger. — 
A. W. 



VEDA Ai^D YEDAKTA. 239 

Thns Mann says (lY. 178) : ^^ On the path on which 
his fathers and grandfathers have walked, on that path 
of good men let him walk, and he will not go wrong." 

In the same manner then in which, ont of the bright 
powers of nature, the Devas or gods had arisen, there 
arose ont of predicates shared in common by the dejDarted, 
such as p i t ^"^ s, fathers, ]3 i' © t a, gone away, another 
general concept, what we should call Manes, the kind 
ones. Ancestors, Shades, Spirits, or Ghosts, whose wor- 
ship was nowhere more fully developed than in India. 
That common name, V iir i^ or Fathers, gradually at- 
tracted toward itself all that the fathers shared in 
common. It came to mean not only fat]iers, but in- 
visible, kind, powerful, immortal, heavenly beings, and 
we can watch in the Yeda, better perhaps than anywhere 
else, the inevitable, yet most touching metamorphosis of 
ancient thought — the love of the child for father and 
mother becoming transfigured into an instinctive belief 
in the immortality of the soul. 

It is strange, and really more than strange, that not only 
should this important and prominent side of the ancient 
religion of the Hindus have been ignored, but that of 
late its very existence should have been doubted. I feel 
obliged, therefore, to add a few words in support of 
what I have said just now of the supreme importance of 
this belief in and this worshij) of ancestral spirits in 
India from the most ancient to the' most modern times. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has done so much in calling 
attention to ancestorship as a natural ingredient of 
religion among all savage nations, declares in the most 
emphatic manner,"^ ''that he has seen it implied, that 
he has heard it in conversation, and that he now has it 
before him in print, that no Indo-European or Semitic 

* " Principles of Sociology," p. 313. 



240 LECTURE vir. 

nation, so far as we know, seems to have made a religion 
of the worship of the dead." I do not donbt his words, 
but I think that on so important a point, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer ought to have named his anthorities. It seems 
to me almost impossible that anybody who has ever 
opened a book on India should have made such a state- 
ment. There are hymns in the Rig-Yeda addressed to 
the Fathers. There are full descriptions of the worship 
due to the Fathers in the Brahma^ias and Sntras. The 
epic poems, the law books, the Pura^ias, all are brimful 
of alhisions to ancestral offerings. The whole social 
fabric of India, with its laws of inheritance and mar- 
riage,"^ rests on a belief in the Manes — and yet we are 
told that no Indo-European nation seems to have made 
a religion of the worship of the dead. 

The Persians had their Fravashis, the Greeks their 
el6(jdXa^ or rather their dsdl rrarpGJoL and their dalfiove^j 

sGdXoi, ^mxOovLOL, (pvXaiceg dvrjToyv dvdpcjnojv' 

01 pa (pvXdaaovGLV ere dlnaS koI oxerXia epya, 

'^spa kaadiievoL rcavr?] (pOLrcjVTeg i:n' alav^ 

TrXovTodorai (Hesiodi Opera et Dies, vv. 122-126) ;f 

while among the Romans the Lares familiar es and the 
DifDi Manes were worshipped more zealously than any 
other gods. J Manu goes so far as to tell ns in one place 

* " The Hindu Law of Inheritance is based upon the Hindu relig- 
ion, and we must be cautious that in administering Hindu law we do 
not, by acting upon our notions derived from English law, inadver- 
tently wound or offend the religious feelings of those who may be 
affected by our decisions," — Bengal Law Beports, 103. 
f *' Earth-wandering demons, they their charge began, 
The ministers of good and guards of man ; 
Veiled with a mantle of aerial light, 

O'er Earth's wide space they wing their hovering flight." 
X Cicero, " De Leg." IL 9, 22, " Deorum manium jura sancta 
sunto ; nos leto datos divos habento." 



VEDA AN"D VEDAKTA. 241 

(III. 203) : ^' An oblation by Bralimans to tlieir ancestor 
transcends an oblation to the deities ;" and yet we are 
told tliat no Indo-European nation seems to have made 
a religion of the worship of the dead. 

Such things ought really not to be, if there is to be 
any progress in historical research, and I cannot help 
thinking that what Mr. Herbert Spencer meant was 
probably no more than that some scholars did not admit 
that the worship of the dead formed the whole of the 
religion of any of the Indo-European nations. That, 
no doubt, is perfectly true, but it would be equally true, 
I believe, of almost any other rehgion. And on this 
point again the students of anthropology will learn 
more, I believe, from the Yeda than from any other 
book. 

In the Yeda the PitWs, or fathers, are invoked to- 
gether with the Devas, or gods, but they are not con- 
founded with them. The Devas never become PitWs, 
and though such adjectives as d e v a are sometimes ap- 
plied to the PitWs, and they are raised to the rank of 
the older classes of Devas (Manu III. 192, 284, Yign^- 
valkya I. 268), it is easy to see that the Pitm and Devas 
had each their independent origin, and that they repre- 
sent two totally distinct phases of the human mind in 
the creation of its objects of worship. Tliis is a lesson 
which ought never to be forgotten. 

We read in the Eig-Yeda, YI. 62, 4: ''May the 
rising Dawns protect me, may the flowing Rivei-s pro- 
tect me, may the firm Moimtains protect me, may the 
Fathers protect me at this invocation of the gods." 
Here nothing can be clearer than the separate existence 
of the Fathers, apart from the Dawns, the Rivers, and 
the Mountains, though they are included in one common 
Devahuti, however, or invocation of the gods. 



242 LECTURE VII. 

We must distiiiguisli, however, from the very first, 
between two classes, or rather between two concej)ts of 
Fathers, the one comprising the distant, half -forgotten, 
and almost mythical ancestors of certain families or of 
what would have been to the poets of the Yeda, the 
whole human race, the other consisting of the fathers 
who had but lately departed, and who were still, as it 
were, personally remembered and revered. 

The old ancestors in general approach more nearly to 
the gods. They are often represented as having gone to 
the abode of Yama, the ruler of the departed, and to 
live there in company with some of the Devas (Rig- Yeda 
YII. 76, 4, devanam sadhamadaA ; Eig-Yeda X. 16, 1, 
devanam va^aniA). 

We sometimes read of the great-grandfathers being in 
heaven, the grandfathers in the sky, the fathers on the 
earth, the first in company with the Adityas, the second 
with the Rudras, the last with the Yasus. All these are 
individual poetical conceptions."^ 

Yama himself is sometimes invoked as if he were one 
of the Fathers, the first of mortals that died or that trod 
the path of the Fathers (the pitWyma, X. 2, 1) leading 
to the common sunset in the West.f Still his real 
Deva-like nature is never completely lost, and, as the 
god of the setting sun, he is indeed the leader of the 
Fathers, but not one of the Fathers himself. :j: 

Many of the benefits which men enjoyed on earth 
were referred to the Fathers, as having first been pro- 

* See Atharva-Veda XVIII. 2, 49. 

f Kig-Veda X. 14, 1-2. He is called Vaivasvata, the solar (X. 58, 1), 
and even the son of Vivasvat (X, 14, 5). In a later phase of religious 
thought Yama is conceived as the first man (Atharva-Veda XVIII, 3, 
13, as compared with Eig-Veda X. 14, 1). 

:|: Rig-Veda X. 14. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 243 

fcured and first enjoyed by them. They performed the 
first sacrifices, and secured the benefits arising from 
them. Even the great events in nature, such as the 
rising of the sun, the hght of the day and the darkness 
of the night, were sometimes referred to them, and they 
were praised for having broken open the dark stable of 
the morning and having brought out the cows, that is, 
the days (X. 68, 11).^ They were even praised for 
having adorned the night with stars, while in later 
writing the stars are said to be the lights of the good 
people who have entered into heaven, f Similar ideas, 
we know, prevailed among the ancient Persians, Greeks, 
and Romans. The Fathers are called in the Yeda 
truthful (satya), wise (suvidatra), righteous (Htavat), 
poets (kavi), leaders (pathikr^t), and one of their most 
frequent epithets is somya, delighting in Soma, Soma 
being the ancient intoxicating beverage of the Yedic 
j^-^'shis, which was believed to bestow immortality,:]: but 
which had been lost, or at all events had become difficult 
to obtain by the Aryans, after their migration into the 
Punjab. § 

The families of the Bhrigus, the Angiras, the Athar- 
vans II all have their Pitns or Fathers, who are invoked 
to sit down on the grass and to accept the offerings 
placed there for them. Even the name of PitHya^?la, 
sacrifice of the Fathers, occurs already in the hymns of 
the Rig'Yeda.t 

The following is one of the hymns of the Rig- Yeda by 

* In the Avesta many of these things are done by Ahura-Mazda 
with the help of the Fravashis. 

f See >Satapatha Brahma?ia I. 9, 3, 10 ; VI. 5, 4, 8. 

:j: Eig-Veda VIII. 48, 3 : " We drank Soma, we became immortal, 
we went to the light, we found the gods ;" VIII. 48, 12. 

I Rig-Veda IX, 97, 39. || L. c. X. 14, 6. •[ L. c. X. 16, 10. 



244 LECTURE VII. 

which those ancient Fathers were invited to come to 
their sacrifice (Rig-veda X. 15) : ^ 

1. '' May the Soma-loving Fathers, the lowest, the 
highest, and the middle, arise. May the gentle and 
righteous Fathers who have come to life (again), protect 
us in these invocations ! 

2. ^' May this salutation be for the Fathers to-day, for 
those who have departed before or after ; whether they 
now dwell in the sky above the earth, or among the 
blessed people. 

3. "I invited the wise Fathers . . . may they 
come hither quickly, and sitting on the grass readily 
partake of the poured-out draught ! 

4. '' Come hither to us with your help, you Fathers 
who sit on the grass ! We have prej)ared these libations 
for you, accept them ! Come hither with your most 
blessed protection, and give us health and wealth with- 
out fail ! 

5. '^ The Soma-loving Fathers have been called hither 
to their dear viands which are placed on the grass. Let 
them approach, let them listen, let them bless, let them 
protect us ! 

6. '' Bending your knee and sitting on my right, ac- 
cept all this sacrifice. Do not hurt us, O Fathers, for 
any wrong that we may have committed against you, 
men as we are. 

T. '^ When you sit down on the lap of the red dawns, 
grant wealth to the generous mortal ! O Fathers, give 
of your treasure to the sons of this man here, and bestow 
vigor here on us ! 

8. '^ May Yama, as a friend with friends, consume 
the offerings according to his wish, united with those old 

* A translation considerably differing from my own is given by 
Sarvadhikari in bis " Tagore Lectures for 1880," p. 34. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 245 

Soma-loving Fathers of ours, tlio Yasishii^Aas, who ar- 
ranged the Soma draught. 

9. '' Come hither, O Agni, with those wise and truth- 
ful Fathers who Kke to sit down near the hearth, who 
thirsted when yearning for the gods, -who knew the 
sacrifice, and who were strong in praise with their songs. 

10. '' Come, O Agni, with those ancient fathers who 
like to sit down near the hearth, who forever praise 
the gods, the truthful, who eat and drink our oblations, 
making company with Indra and the gods. 

11. '^ O Fathers, you who have been consumed by 
Agni, come here, sit down on your seats, you kind 
guides ! Eat of the offerings which we have placed on 
the turf, and then grant us wealth and strong offspring ! 

12. ^^ O Agni, O 6^atavedas,* at our request thou 
hast carried the offerings, having first rendered them 
sweet. Thou gavest them to the Fathers, and they fed 
on their share. Eat also, O god, the proffered obla- 
tions ! 

13. " The Fathers who are here, and the Fathers who 
are not here, those whom we know, and those whom we 
know not, thou (7atavedas, knowest how many they are, 
accept the well-made sacrifice with the sacrificial por- 
tions ! 

14. ^' To those who, whether burned by fire or not 
burned by fire, rejoice in their share in the midst of 
heaven, grant thou, O King, that their body may take 
that life which they wish for !"f 

* Cf. Max Miiller, Eig-Yeda, transl. vol. i. p. 24. 

•j- In a previous note will be found the statement by Professor De 
Coiilanges, of Strasburg, that in India, as in other countries, a belief 
in the ancestral spirits came first, and a belief in divinities afterward. 
Professor Miiller cites other arguments which might be employed in 
support of such a theory. The name of the oldest and greatest 



246 LEOTUBE yii. 

Distinct from the worship offered to these primitive 
ancestors, is the reverence which from an early time was 
felt to be due by children to their departed father, soon 
also to their grandfather, and great-grandfather. The 
ceremonies in which these more personal feelings found 



among the Devas, for instance, is not simply Dyaus, but Dyansh-pita, 
Heaven-Father ; and there are several names of the same character, 
not only in Sanskrit, but in Greek and Latin also. Jupiter and Zeus 
Pater are forms of the appellation mentioned, and mean the Father in 
Heaven. It does certainly look as though Dyaus, the sky, had be- 
come personal and worshipped only after he had been raised to the 
category of a Pitri, a father ; and that this predicate of Father must 
have been elaborated first before it could have been used, to compre- 
hend Dyaus, the sky, Varuna, and other Devas. Professor Miiller, 
however, denies that this is the whole truth in the case. The Vedic 
poets, he remarks, believed in Devas — gods, if we must so call them 
— literally, the bright ones ; Pitris, fathers ; and Manushyas, men, 
mortals. (Atharva-Veda, X. 6, 32.) Who came first and who came 
after it is difficult to say ; but as soon as the three were placed side 
by side, the Devas certainly stood the highest, then followed the 
Pitris, and last came the mortals. Ancient thought did not compre- 
hend the three under one concept, but it paved the way to it. The 
mortals after passing through death became Fathers, and the Fathers 
became the companions of the Devas. 

In Manu there is an advance beyond this point. The world, all 
that moves and rests, we are told (Manu III., 201), has been made by 
the Devas ; but the Devas and Danavas were born of the Pitns, and 
the Pitj'is of the iiishis. Originally the i?ishis were the poets of the 
Vedas, seven in number ; and we are not told how they came to be 
placed above the Devas and Pitns. It does not, however, appear 
utterly beyond the power to solve. The Vedas were the production 
of the Eishis, and the Pitris, being perpetuated thus to human mem- 
ory, became by a figure of speech their offspring. The Devas sprung 
from the Pitris, because it was usual to apotheosize the dead. *' Our 
ancestors desired," says Cicero, " that the men who had quitted this 
life should be counted in the number of gods." Again, the concep- 
tion of patrons or Pitris to each family and tribe naturally led to the 
idea of a Providence over all ; and so the Pitri begat the Deva. This 
religion preceded and has outlasted the other. — A. W. 



YEDA AKD VEDAKTA. 247 

expression were of a more domestic character, and al- 
lowed therefore of greater local variety. 

It would be qnite impossible to give here even an 
abstract only of the minute regulations which have been 
preserved to ns in the Brahma7?.as, the xSrauta, GWhya, 
and Samaya^arika Sutras, the Law-books, and a mass of 
later manuals on the performance of endless rites, all 
intended to honor the Departed. Such are the minute 
prescriptions as to times and seasons, as to altars and 
offerings, as to the number and shape of the sacrificial 
vessels, as to the proper postures of the sacrificers, and 
the different arrangements of the vessels, that it is 
extremely difficnlt to catch hold of what we really care 
for, namely, the thoughts and intentions of those who 
first devised all these intricacies. Mnch has been 
written on this class of sacrifices by European scholars 
also, beginning with Colebrooke's excellent essays on 
'^ The Religious Ceremonies of the Hindus," first pub- 
lished in the ^ ^ Asiatic Researches, ' ' vol. v. Calcutta, 
1798. But when we ask the simple question, What was 
the thought from whence all this outward ceremonial 
sprang, and what was the natural craving of the human 
heart which it seemed to satisfy, we hardly get an in- 
telligible answer anywhere. It is true that /Si'addhas 
continue to be performed all over India to the present 
day, but we know how widely the modern ceremonial 
has diverged from the rules laid down in the old /S^astras, 
and it is quite clear from the descriptions given to us by 
recent travellers that no one can understand the purport 
even of these survivals of the old ceremonial, unless he 
understands Sanskrit and can read the old Sutras. We 
are indeed told in full detail how the cakes were made 
which the Spirits were suj)posed to eat, how many stalks 
of grass were to be used on which they had to be offered, 



248 LECTURE VII. 

how long each stalk ought to be, and in what direction 
it should be held. All the things which teach us noth- 
ing are explained to ns in abundance, but the few things 
which the true scholar really cares for are passed over, 
as if they had no interest to us at all, and have to be 
discovered under heaps of rubbish. 

In order to gain a Httle light, I think we ought to 
distinguish between — 

1. The daily ancestral sacrifice, the Pit7'^ya^?^a, as 
one of the five Great Sacrifices (Mahayap'7^as) ; 

2. The monthly ancestral sacrifice, the Pi?^(ia-pitH- 
ysLffna, as part of the New and Full-moon sacrifice ; 

3. The funeral ceremonies on the death of a house- 
holder ; 

4. The Agapes, or feasts of love and charity, com- 
monly called /&addhas, at which food and other chari- 
table gifts were bestowed on deserving persons in 
memory of the deceased ancestors. The name of 
xSraddha belongs properly to this last class only, . but 
it has been transferred to the second and third class of 
sacrifices also, because x^raddha formed an important 
part in them. 

The daily Pitr^ya^;1a or Ancestor-worship is one of 
the five sacrifices, sometimes called the Great Sacrifices,"^ 
which every married man ought to perform day by day. 
They are mentioned in the GHhyasutras (A<9v. III. 1), 
as Devaya^^a, for the Devas, Bhutaya^^a, for animals, 
etc., 'PitrijaLgnHj for the Fathers, Brahmaya^^a, for 
Brahman, i.e. study of the Yeda, and Manushyayap^^a, 
for men, i.e. hospitality, etc. 



* 5'atapatha Brahmana XI. 5, 6, 1 ; Taitt. Ar. II. 11, 10 ; Asvalayana 
Gj'ihya-sutras III. 1, 1 ; Paraskara G^uhya-sutras II. 9, 1 ; Apastamba, 
Pharma-sutras, translated by Biihler, pp. 47 seq. 



YEDA AKD VEDAKTA. 249 

Mann (III. 70) tells us the same, namely, tliat a 
married man lias five great religious duties to perform : 

1. The Brahma-sacrifice, i.e. the studying and teach- 
ing of the Yeda (sometimes called Ahuta). 

2. The Pit/^'-sacrifice, i.e. the offering of cakes and 
water to the Manes (sometimes called Pra^ita). 

3. The Deva-sacrifice, i.e. the offering of oblations to 
the gods (sometimes called Hnta). 

4. The Bhuta-sacrifice, i.e. the giving of food to living 
creatures (sometimes called Prahuta). 

5. The Manushya-sacrifice, i.e. the receiving of guests 
with hospitality (sometimes called Brahmya hnta).^ 

The performance of this daily PitWya^^a seems to 
have been extremely simple. The householder had to 
put his sacred cord on the right shoulder, to say 
^' Svadha to the Fathers," and to throw the remains 
of certain offerings toward the south. f 

The human impulse to this sacrifice, if sacrifice it can 
be called, is clear enough. The five '' great sacrifices" 
comprehended in early times the whole duty of man 
from day to day. They were connected with his daily 
meal.:]: When this meal was preparing, and before he 
could touch it himself, he was to offer something to the 
gods, a Yai^vadeva offering, § in which the chief deities 
were Agni, fire, Soma the Yi^ve Devas, Dhanvantari, 
the kind of Aesculapius, Kuhu and Anumati (phases of 
the moon), Pra^apati, lord of creatures, Dyava-pr^thivi, 
Heaven and Earth, and Svish^akWt, the fire on the 
hearth. || 

* In the <Sankhayana Grihya (I. 5) iowv Paka-yagrnas are mentioned, 
called Huta, ahuta, prahuta, prasita, 
f Asv. Grihya-sutras I. 3, 10. 

X Manu in. 117-118. § L. c. IH. 85. 

I See Des Coulanges, " Ancient City," I. 3. "Especially were the 



250 LECTURE YII. 

After having thus satisfied the gods in the loar 
quarters, the householder had to throw some oblations 
into the open air, which were intended for animals, and 
in some cases for invisible beings, ghosts and such like. 
Then he was to remember the Departed, the Titris, with 
some offerings ; but even after having done this he was 
not yet to begin his own repast, unless he had also given 
something to strangers (atithis). 

When all this had been fulfilled, and when, besides, 
the householder, as we should say, had said his daily 
prayers, or repeated what he had learned of the Yeda, 
then and then only was he in harmony with the world 
that surrounded him, the five Great Sacrifices had been 
performed by him, and he was free from all the sins 
arising from a thoughtless and selfish life. 

This PitWya^^^a, as one of the five daily sacrifices, is 
described in the Brahma^^^as, the GWhya and Samay- 

meals of the family religions acts. The god [the sacred fire] pre- 
sided there. He had cooked the bread and prepared the food ; a 
prayer, therefore, was due at the beginning and end of the repast. 
Before eating, they placed upon the altar the first fruits of the food ; 
before drinking, they poured out a libation of wine. This was the 
god's portion. No one doubted that he was present, that he ate and 
drank ; for did they not see the flame increase as if it had been nour- 
ished by the provisions offered ? Thus the meal was divided between 
the man and the god. It was a sacred ceremony, by which they held 
communion with each other. . . . The religion of the sacred fire 
dates from the distant and dim epoch when there were yet no Greeks, 
no Italians, no Hindus, when there were only Aryas, When the 
tribes separated they carried this worshix^ with them, some to the 
banks of the Ganges, others to the shores of the Mediterranean. . . . 
Each group chose its own gods, but all preserved as an ancient 
legacy the first religion which they had known and practiced in the 
common cradle of their race. ' ' 

The fire in the house denoted the ancestor, or pitn, and in turn 
the serpent was revered as a living fire, and so an appropriate symbol 
of the First Father.— A. W. 



VEDA. AND VEDAKTA. 251 

aHrika Sutras, and, of course, in the legal Samhitas. 
Rajendralal Mitra^ informs ns that " orthodox Brah- 
mans to this day profess to observe all these five cere- 
monies, but that in reality only the offerings to the gods 
and manes are strictly observed, while the reading is 
completed by the repetition of the Gayatri only, and 
charity and feeding of animals are casual and uncer- 
tain." 

Quite different from this simple daily ancestral offering 
is the PitWya^^a or Tind^L-^itrijSignsi, which forms part 
of many of the statutable sacrifices, and, first of all, of 
the 'New and Full-moon sacrifice. Here again the 
human motive is intelligible enough. It was the con- 
templation of the regular course of nature, the dis- 
covery of order in the coming and going of the heavenly 
bodies, the growing confidence in some ruling power of 
the world which lifted man's thoughts from his daily 
work to higher regions, and filled his heart with a desire 
to approach these higher powers with praise, thanks- 
giving, and offerings. And it was at such moments as 
the waning of the moon that his thoughts would most 
naturally turn to those whose life had waned, whose 
bright faces were no longer visible on earth, his fathers 
or ancestors. Therefore at the very beginning of the 
New-moon sacrifice, we are told in the Brahma^iasf and 
in the /(Srauta-sutras, that a PitWya^^, a sacrifice to the 
Fathers, has to be performed. A ^ru or pie had to be 
]3repared in the Dakshi^iagni, the southern fire, and the 
offerings, consisting of water and round cakes (-pindsis), 
were specially dedicated to father, grandfather, and 
great-grandfather, while the wife of the sacrificer, if 

* " Taittiriyaranyaka," Preface, p. 23. 

f Masi masi vo 'sanam iti svateh ; Gobhiliya Gr?*ihya sutras, p. 1055. 



252 LECTURE yii. 

she wished for a son, was allowed to eat one of the 
cakes. ^ 

Similar ancestral offerings took place during other 
sacrifices too, of which the 'New and Full-moon sacrifices 
form the general type. 

It may be quite true that these two kinds of ancestral 
sacrifices have the same object and share the same name, 
but their character is different ; and if, as has often been 
the case, they are mixed up together, we lose the most 
important lessons which a study of the ancient cere- 
monial should teach us. I cannot describe the difference 
between these two PitWya^was more decisively than by 
pointing out that the former was performed by the father 
of a family, or, if we may say so, by a layman, the latter 
by a regular priest, or a class of priests, selected by the 
sacrificer to act in his behalf. As the Hindus them- 
selves would put it, the former is a gWhya, a domestic, 
the latter a <§rauta, a priestly ceremony, f 

We now come to a third class of ceremonies which are 
likewise domestic and personal, but which differ from 
the two preceding ceremonies by their occasional char- 
acter, I mean the funeral, as distinct from the ancestral 
ceremonies. In one respect these funeral ceremonies 
may represent an earlier phase of worship than the daily 
and monthly ancestral sacrifices. They lead up to them, 

* See Piw^apit?'iyagrna, Yon Dr. O. Donner, 1870. The restriction 
to three ancestors, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, occurs 
in the Vagasaneyi-samhita, XIX. 36-37. 

f There is, however, great variety in these matters, according to 
different sakhas. Thus, according to the Gobhila-sakha, the PiwtZa 
Titrijagfia. is to be considered as smarta, not as srauta (pinda-pitriya- 
gna.h khalv asmafc/c/iakhayam nasti) ; while others maintain that an 
agnimat should perform the smarta, a srautagnimat the srauta Pitnya- 
gna. ; see Gobhiliya Grihya-sutras, p. 671. On page 667 we read : 
anagner amavasyasraddha, nanvaharyam ity adaraniyam. 



VEDA Al^D VEDAKtA. 253 

and, as it were, prepare tlie departed for their future 
dignity as PitHs or Ancestors. On the other hand, the 
conception of Ancestors in general must have existed 
before any departed person could have been raised to that 
rank, and I therefore preferred to describe the ancestral 
sacrifices first. 

'Nov need I enter here very fully into the character of 
the special funeral ceremonies of India. I described 
them in a special paper, '' On Sepulture and Sacrificial 
Customs in the Yeda," nearly thirty years ago."^ Their 
spirit is the same as that of the funeral ceremonies of 
Greeks, Romans, Slavonic, and Teutonic nations, and 
the coincidences between them all are often most sur- 
prising. 

In Yedic times the people in India both burned and 
buried their dead, and they did this with a certain 
solemnity, and, after a time, according to fixed rules. 
Their ideas about the status of the departed, after their 
body had been burned and their ashes buried, varied 
considerably, but in the main they seem to have beHeved 
in a life to come, not very different from our life on 
earth, and in the power of the departed to confer bless- 
ings on their descendants. It soon therefore became the 
interest of the survivors to secure the favor of their 
departed friends by observances and offerings which, at 
first, were the spontaneous manifestation of human 
feelings, but which soon became traditional, technical, 
in fact, ritual. 

On the day on which the corpse had been burned, the 
relatives (samanodakas) bathed and poured out a handful 
of water to the deceased, pronouncing his name and that 

* " Uber Todtenbestattung und Opfergebrauche im Veda, in Zeit- 
schrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaf t, " vol. ix. 1856. 



264: LECTURE VII. 

of his family."^ At sunset they returned home, and, as 
was but natural, they were told to cook nothing during 
the first night, and to observe certain rules during the 
next day up to ten days, according to the character of the 
deceased. These were days of mourning, or, as they 
were afterward called, days of impurity, when the 
mourners withdrew from contact with the world, and 
shrank by a natural impulse from the ordinary occupa- 
tions and pleasures of life.f 

Then followed the collecting of the ashes on the 11th, 
13th, or 15th day of the dark half of the moon. On 
returning from thence they bathed, and then ojQEered 
what was called a /Si*addha to the departed., 

This word /^raddha, which meets us here for the first 
time, is full of interesting lessons, if only properly under- 
stood. First of all it should be noted that it is absent, 
not only from the hymns, but, so far as we know at 
present, even from the ancient Brahma7^as. It seems 
therefore a word of a more modern origin. There is a 
passage in Apastamba's Dharma-siitras which betrays, on 
the part of the author, a consciousness of the more 
modern origin of the /S^raddhas : :j: 

" Formerly men and gods lived together in this 
world. Then the gods in reward of their sacrifices went 
to heaven, but men were left behind. Those men who 
perform sacrifices in the same manner as the gods did, 
dwelt (after death) with the gods and Brahman in 
heaven. Now (seeing men left behind) Manu revealed 

* Asvalayana Grthya-sutras IV. 4, 10. 

f Manu V. 64-65. 

X Biihler, Apastamba, " Sacred Books of the East," vol. ii., p. 138 5 
also "^raddhakalpa," p. 890. Though the /Sraddha is prescribed in 
the " Gobhiliya Grihya-sutras," IV. 4, 2-3, it is not described there, 
but in a separate treatise, the 5'raddha-kalpa. 



VEDA AKD YEDAKTA. 255 

this ceremony which is designated by the word /Si-ad - 
dha." 

/Sraddha has assumed many "^ meanings, and Mann,f for 
instance, uses it almost synonymously with pitWya^/za. 
But its original meaning seems to have been ' ' that which 
is given with ^-raddha or faith, i.e. charity bestowed on 
deserving persons, and, more particularly, on Brah- 
ma^as. The gift was called ^raddha, but the act itself 
also was called by the same name. The word is best 
explained by Naraya7^a in his commentary on the 
GHhya-sutras of A^valayana (lY. Y), ^' xSi'addha is that 
w^hich is given in faith to Brahmans for the sake of the 
Fathers.":}: 

Such charitable gifts flowed most naturally and abun- 
dantly at the time of a man's death, or whenever his 
memory was revived by happy or unhappy events in a 
family, and hence /(Sraddha has become the general name 
for ever so many sacred acts commemorative of the 
departed. We hear of xSraddhas not only at funerals, 
but at joyous events also, when presents were bestowed 
in the name of the family, and therefore in the name of 
the ancestors also, on all who had a right to that distinc- 
tion. 

It is a mistake therefore to look upon /cSraddhas simply 
as offerings of water or cakes to the Fathers. An offer- 

* As meaning the food, sraddha occurs in sraddhablmg' and similar 
words. As meaning the sacrificial act, it is explained, yatraitaA; 
fc/iraddhaya diyate tad eva karma sraddhasabdabhidheyam. Pretam 
pitnms fca nirdisya hhogyam yat priyam atmanaA sraddhaya diyate 
yatra tafc Mraddham parikirtitam. " Gobhiliya Grihya-sutras," p. 
892. We also read sraddhanvita/i sraddha??i kiirvita, "let a man 
perform the sraddha with faith;" " Gobhiliya G^-jhya-sutras, " p. 
1053. f Manu in. 82. 

t Pitrtn iiddisya yad diyate brahma?iebhya/i sraddhaya taA; Mradd 
iiam. 



256 LECTURE yii. 

ing to the Fathers was, no doubt, a sjmbohc part" of each 
/Sraddha, but its more important character was charity 
bestowed in memory of the Fathers. 

This, in time, gave rise to mnch abuse, like the alms 
bestowed on the Church during the Middle Ages. But 
in the beginning the motive was excellent. It was 
simply a wish to benefit others, arising from the convic- 
tion, felt more strongly in the presence of death than at 
any other time, that as we can carry nothing out of this 
world, we ought to do as much good as possible in the 
world with our worldly goods. At /(Sraddhas the Brah- 
ma?ias were said to represent the sacrificial fire into 
which the gifts should be thrown.^ If we translate 
here Brahma^as by priests, we can easily understand 
why there should have been in later times so strong 
a feehng against /S'raddhas. But priest is a very bad 
rendering of Brahma^ia. The Brahmawas were, socially 
and intellectually, a class of men of high breeding. 
They were a recognized and, no doubt, a most essential 
element in the ancient society of India. As they lived 
for others, and were excluded from most of the lucrative 
pursuits of life, it was a social, and it soon became a 
religious duty, that they should be supported by the 
community at large. Great care was taken that the 
recipients of such bounty as was bestowed at A5raddhas 
should be strangers, neither friends nor enemies, and 
in no way related to the family. Thus Apastamba 
says : f "The food eaten (at a xS^raddha) by persons 
related to the giver is a gift offered to goblins. It 
reaches neither the Manes nor the Gods. ' ' A man who 
tried to curry favor by bestowing >Sraddhika gifts, was 
called by an opprobrious name, a >S^raddha-mitra.:j: 

* Apastamba II. 16, 3, Brahmawas tv ahavaniyarthe, 

t L. c. p. 142. t ^anu III. 138, 140. 



VEDA AKD VEDAKTA. ^^'^ 



Without denying therefore that in later tames the 
system of ^r4cldhas may have degenerated, I thmk we 
can perceive that it sprang from a pnre source, and 
what for our present purpose is even more important, 
from an intelligible source. . , r. -i. «*„„» 

Let us now return to the passage m the G«hyas.itras 
of A.va%ana, where we met for the first tame with tne 
name of &Mdha.* It was the ^rMdha to be given for 
the sake of the Departed, after his ashes had been 
collected in an urn and buried. This Sr4ddha is called 
ekoddishfa,t or, as we should say, personal. It was 
meant for one person only, not for the three ancestors, 
nor for all the ancestors. Its object was m fact to raise 
the departed to the rank of a PitW, and this had to be 
achieved by &addha offerings continued during a whole 
year. This at least is the general, and, most likely, the 
original rule. Apastamba says that the Mha for a 
deceased relative should be P-'fo^ed every day during 
the year, and that after that a monthly ^addha only 
should be performed or none at all, that is, no more 
personal ^raddha,i: because the departed shares hence- 
forth in the regular Parvana-.rMdhas.§ /ffkhayana 
says the same,| namely that the personal ^raddha lasts 
for a year, and that then " the Fourth'' is dropped, .... 
the great-grandfather was dropped, the grandfather be- 
came the great-grandfather, the father the grandfather, 

* " Asv Gnhya-sutras" IV. 5, 8. , . cc r^ -ii •^-.r^ 

t Ittrdescribed as a vikriti of the P&va«a-.^adha ^n" Gobh.hya 

''f ^nf S"tL?diZuces between the acts before and after the 
SalMkaral i. noted by Salankayana :-Sapi«ntaranam yavad 
ri^utobhai/. pUrikriya Sapi«dikara„ad nrdhvam dv.gu,.a« v.dh,vad 
bhavet. " Gobhiliya Gi-ihya-sutras," p. 930. 

^ " Gobhilij'a Gi-ihya-sutras," p. 1023. 

jj " Grihya-sutras," ed. Oldenberg, p. 83, 



258 LECTURE yii. 

while the lately Departed occupied the father's place 
among the three principal Vitris.^ This was called the 
Sapi?i(^ikarana, i. e. the elevating of the departed to the 
rank of an ancestor. 

There are here, as elsewhere, many exceptions. 
Gobhila allows six months instead of a year, or even 
a Tripaksha,t i.e. three half -months ; and lastly, any 
auspicious event (vWddhi) may become the«occasion of 
the Sapi?i6Zikara7ia. :j: 

The full number of /(Sraddhas necessary for the Sapiw-- 
<^ana is sometimes given as sixteen, viz., the first, then 
one in each of the twelve months, then two semestral 
ones, and lastly the Sapi7i<^ana. But here too much 
variety is allow^ed, though, if the Saj3i^<^ana takes place 
before the end of the year, the number of sixteen 
/Si-addhas has still to be made up.§ 

When the /Si'addha is offered on account of an aus- 
picious event, such as a birth or a marriage, the fathers 
invoked are not the father, grandfather, and great- 
grandfather, who are sometimes called asrumukha, with 
tearful faces, but the ancestors before them, and they 
are called nandimukha, or joyful. \\ 

Colebrooke,T to whom we owe an excellent descrip- 
tion of what a /Sraddha is in modern times, took evi- 
dently the same view, ^^ The first set of funeral cere- 
monies, ' ' he writes, ' ' is adapted to effect, by means of 

* A pratyabdikam ekoddish^am on the anniversary of the deceased 
is mentioned by Gobhiliya, 1. c. p. 1011. 

f " Gobhiliya Grihya-sutras," p. 1039. 

X " 5ankh. Grihya," p. 83 ; " Gobh. Grihya," p. 1024. According to 
some authorities the ekoddisWa is called nava, new, during ten days ; 
navamisra, mixed, for six months ; and pura/ia, old, afterward. 
" Gobhiliya Gnhya-sutras, " p. 1020. 

§ " Gobhiliya," 1. c. p. 1032. || " Gobhiliya," 1. c. p. 1047. 

^ " Life and Essays," ii. p. 195. 



VEDA AND YEDAKTA. 259 

oblations, the re-embodying of the soul of the deceased, 
after burning his corpse. The apparent scope of the 
second set is to raise his shade from this world, where 
it would else, according to the notions of the Hindus, 
continue to roam among demons and evil spirits, up to 
heaven, and then deify him, as it were, among the 
manes of departed ancestors. For this end, a /^raddha 
shoiild regularly be offered to the deceased on the day 
after the mourning expires ; twelve other /SVaddhas 
singly to the deceased in twelve successive months ; 
similar obsequies at the end of the third fortnight, and 
also in the sixth month, and in the twelfth ; and the 
oblation called Sapi?i(^ana on the first anniversary of his 
decease.* At this Sapi^(^ana >(Sraddha, which is the last 
of the ekoddish^a ^addhas, four funeral cakes are 
offered to the deceased and his three ancestors, that 
consecrated to the deceased being divided into three 
portions and mixed with the other three cakes. The 
portion retained is often offered to the deceased, and the 
act of union and fellowship becomes complete, f 

When this system of /Sraddhas had once been started, 
it seems to have spread very rapidly. We soon hear of 
the monthly x^raddha, not only in memory of one person 
lately deceased, but as part of the Pit^'^'ya^/^a, and as 
obligatory, not only on householders (agnimat), but on 

* Colebrooke adds that in most provinces the periods for these 
sixteen ceremonies, and for the concluding obsequies entitled Sapin- 
dana, are anticipated, and the whole is completed on the second or 
third day ; after which they are again performed at the proper times, 
but in honor of the whole set of progenitors instead of the deceased 
singly. It is this which Dr. Donner, in his learned paper on the 
" Pijidapitnyagna" (p. 11), takes as the general rule. 

f See this subject most exhaustively treated, particularly in its 
bearings on the law of inheritance, in Eajkumar Sarvadhikai-i' s 
" Tagore Law Lectures for 1880," p. 93. 



260 LECTURE VII. 

other persons also, and, not only on tlie three npper 
castes, but even, without hymns, on /Sudras,"^ and as to 
be performed, not only on the day of New-Moon, but 
on other days also,f whenever there was an opportum'ty. 
Grobhila seems to look npon the Pm^^apitWyap'^a as itself 
a >SrMdha,:j: and the commentator holds that, even if 
there are no pi^fZas or cakes, the Brahman s onght still 
to be fed. This /(Sraddha, however, is distinguished 
from the other, the true /S'raddha, called Anvaharya, 
which follows it,§ and which is properly known by the 
name of Parva^^a /Si^addha. 

The same difficulties which confront us when we try 
to form a clear conception of the character of the various 
ancestral ceremonies, were felt by the Brahmans them- 
selves, as may be seen from the long discussions in the 
commentary on the /Sraddha-kalpa || and from the abusive 
language used by ^andrakanta Tarkalankara against 
Kaghunandana. The question with them assumes the 
form of what is pradhana (primary) and what is anga 
(secondary) in these sacrifices, and the final result arrived 
at is that sometimes the offering of cakes is pradhana, as 
in the Pi^^.(fZapitr^ya^?1a, sometimes the feeding of Brah- 
mans only, as in the Nitya-sraddha, sometimes both, as 
in the Sapi^i^i^ikara^a. 

We may safely say, therefore, that not a day passed in 
the life of the ancient people of India on which they 

* '' GobMliya Orihya-sutras," p. 892. f L. c. p. 897. 

X See p. 666, and p. 1008. Grihyakara/i pin^apitriyaj/^asya .sradd- 
hatvam aha. 

^ Gobhila IV. 4, 3, itarad anvaharyam. But the commentators add 
anagner amavasyasraddham, nanvaharyam. According to Gobhila 
there oiight to be the Vaisvadeva offering and the Bali offering at the 
end of each Parvana-sraddha ; see "Gobhiliya Gnhya-siltras," p. 
1005, but no Vaisvadeva at an ekoddish^a sraddha, 1. c. p. 1020. 

II L. c. pp. 1005-1010 ; *' Nirnayasindhu," p. 270, 



VEDA AND VEDAKTA. 261 

were not reminded of their ancestors, both near and 
distant, and showed their respect for them, partly by 
symbolic offerings to the Manes, partly by charitable 
gifts to deserving persons, chiefly Brahmans. These 
offertories varied from the simplest, such as milk and 
fruits, to the costliest, such as gold and jewels. The 
feasts given to those who were invited to officiate or 
assist at a /S'raddha seem in some cases to have been very 
sumptuous,'^ and what is very important, the eating of 
meat, which in later times was strictly forbidden in 
many sects, must, when the Sutras were written, have 
been fully recognized at these feasts, even to the killing 
and eating of a cow.f 

This shows that these /^raddhas, though possibly of 
later date than the PitWya^^as, belong nevertheless to a 
very early phase of Indian life. And though much may 
have been changed in the outward form of these ancient 
ancestral sacrifices, their original solemn character has 
remained unchanged. Even at present, when the wor- 
ship of the ancient Devas is ridiculed by many who still 
take part in it, the worship of the ancestors and the 
offering of /Sraddhas have maintained much of their old 
sacred character. They have sometimes been compared 
to the '^ conim anion" in the Christian Church, and it is 
certainly true that many natives speak of their funeral 
and ancestral ceremonies with a hushed voice and with 
real reverence. They alone seem still to impart to their 
life on earth a deeper significance and a higher prospect. 
I could go even a step further and express my belief, 

* See Burnell, '' The Law of Partition," p. 31. 

f Kalau tavad gavalamblio ma?»sadana7n fca sraddhe nishiddhani, 
GobMlena tn madbyamash/akaya/ii vastukarmani ^-a gavalamblio 
vihita/i, ina7>isafcarus /canyashfakya.sraddhe ; Gobhiliya Grihya-sutra. 
ed. " Aaiidrakanta Tarkiilaiikara, Viynapti," p. 8. 



LECTUKE Til. 



that the absence of such services for the dead and of 
ancestral commemorations is a real loss in onr own 
religion. Almost every religion recognizes them as 
tokens of a loving memory offered to a father, to a 
mother, or even to a child, and though in many coun- 
tries they may have proved a source of superstition, 
there runs through them all a deep well of living human 
faith that ought never to be allowed to perish. The 
early Christian Church had to sanction the ancient 
prayers for the Souls of the Departed, and in more 
southern countries the services on All Saints' and on 
All Souls' Day continue to satisfy a craving of the 
human heart which must be satisfied in every religion.* 
"We, in the North, shrink from these open manifesta- 
tions of grief, but our hearts know often a deeper bitter- 
ness ; nay, there would seem to be a higher truth than 
we at first imagine in the belief of the ancients that the 
souls of our beloved ones leave us no rest, unless they 
are appeased by daily prayers, or, better still, by daily 
acts of goodness in remembrance of them.f 

* It may be seriously doubted whether prayers to the dead or for 
the dead satisfy any craving of the human heart. With us in "the 
North," a shrinking from " open manifestations of grief" has nothing 
whatever to do with the matter. Those who refuse to engage in 
such worship believe and teach that the dead are not gods and can- 
not be helped by our prayers. Reason, not feeling, prevents such 
worship. — Am. Pubs. 

f A deeper idea than affection inspired this custom. Every kins- 
man was always such, living or dead ; and hence the service of the 
dead was sacred and essential. The /Sraddhas were adopted as the 
performance of such offices. There were twelve forms of this service ; 
1. The daily offering to ancestors. 2. The sraddha for a person lately 
deceased, and not yet included with the pitris, 3. The sraddha 
offered for a specific object. 4. The offering made on occasions of 
rejoicing. 5. The sraddha performed when the recently-departed has 
been incorporated among the Pitris. 6. The sraddha performed on a 



YEDA AN^D YBDAKTA. 263 

But there is still aiiotlier Beyond tliat found expression 
in the ancient religion of India. Besides the Devas or 
Gods, and besides the Pit^^s or Fathers, there was a 
third world, without which the ancient religion of India 
could not have become what we see it in the Yeda. 
That third Beyond was what the poets of the Yeda call 
the i^'^^ta, and which I believe meant originally no more 
than ^' the straight hne." It is ai)phed to the straight 
line of the sun in its daily course, to the straight line 
followed by day and night, to the straight line that 
regulates the seasons, to the straight line which, in spite 
of many momentary deviations, was discovered to run 
through the whole realm of nature. We call that Eiid., 
that straight, direct, or right line, when we apply it in 
a more general sense, the Law of Nature ; and when we 
apply it to the moral world, w^e try to express the same 
idea again by speaking of the Moral Laio, the law on 
which our life is founded, the eternal Law of Eight and 
Eeason, or, it may be, '' that which makes for righteous- 
ness" both within us and without."^ 

And thus, as a thoughtful look on nature led to the 
first perception of bright gods, and in the end of a God 
of light, as love of our parents was transfigured into 

parvan-day, i.e., new moon, the eighth day, fourteenth day, and 
full moon. 7. The sraddha performed in a house of assembly for the 
benefit of learned men. 8. Expiatory. 9. Part of some other cere- 
mony. 10. Offered for the sake of the Devas. 11. Performed be- 
fore going on a journey. 12. >Sraddha for the sake of wealth. The 
.sraddhas may be performed in one's ov/n house, or in some secluded 
and pure place. The number performed each year by those who can 
afford it varies considerably ; but ninetj^-six appears to be the more 
common. The most fervent are the twelve new-moon rites ; four 
Yuga and fourteen Manu rites ; twelve corresponding to the passages 
of the sun into the zodiacal mansions, etc. — A. W. 
* See " Hibbert Lectures," new ed. pp. 243-255. 



264 LECtUEE VII. 

piety and a belief in immortality, a recognition of the 
straight Hnes in the world without, and in the world 
within, was raised into the highest faith, a faith in a law 
that nnderhes everything, a law in which we may trust, 
whatever befall, a law which speaks within us with the 
divine voice of conscience, and tells us ' ' this is Hta, ' ' 
'' this is right," ^' this is true," whatever the statutes of 
our ancestors, or even the voices of our bright gods, may 
say to the contrary."^ 

These three Beyonds are the three revelations of 
antiquity ; and it is due almost entirely to the discovery 
of the Yeda that we, in this nineteenth century of ours, 
have been allowed to watch again these early phases of 
thought and religion, which had passed away long before 
the beginnings of other literatures, f In the Yeda an 
ancient city has been laid bare before our eyes which, in 
the history of all other religions, is filled up with rub- 
bish, and built over by new architects. Some of the 
earhest and most instructive scenes of our distant child- 
hood have risen once more above the horizon of our 



* The same concept is found in the Platonic Dialogue between 
Sokrates and Euthyphron. The philosopher asks the diviner to tell 
what is holy and what impiety. " That which is pleasing to the gods 
is holy, and that which is not pleasing to them is impious" promptly 
replies the mantis, " To be holy is to be just," said Soki'ates ; " Is the 
thing holy because they love it, or do they love it because it is holy ?" 
Enthyphron hurried away in alarm. He had acknowledged unwit- 
tingly that holiness or justice was supreme above all gods ; and this 
highest concept, this highest faith, he dared not entertain. — A. W. 

f In Chinese we find that the same three aspects of religion and 
their intimate relationship were recognized, as, for instance, when 
Confucius says to the Prince of Sung : ' ' Honor the sky (worship of 
Devas), reverence the Manes ^worship of Pitn's) ; if you do this, sun 
and moon wiU keep their appointed time (.Rita)." Happel, " Altchi- 
nesische Beichsreligion, " p. 11. 



VEDA AlfD VEDANTA. 265 

memory which, until thirty or forty years ago, seemed 
to have vanished forever. 

Only a few words more to indicate at least how this 
rehgious growth in India contained at the same time the 
germs of Indian philosophy. Philosophy in India is, 
what it ought to be, not the denial, but the fulfilment 
of religion ; it is the highest religion, and the oldest 
name of the oldest system of philosophy in India is 
Y e d a n t a, that is, the end, the goal, the highest object 
of the Yeda. 

Let us return once more to that ancient theologian who 
lived in the fifth century b.c, and who told us that, even 
before his time, all the gods had been discovered to be 
but three gods, the gods of the Earthy the gods of the 
Air^ and the gods of the BTty^ invoked under various 
names. The same writer tells us that in reality there is 
but one God, but he does not call him the Lord, or the 
Highest God, the Creator, Ruler, and Preserver of all 
things, but he calls him A t m a n, the Self. The one 
Atman or Self, he says, is praised in many ways owing 
to the greatness of the godhead. And then he goes on 
to say : '^ The other gods are but so many members of 
the one Atman, Self, and thus it has been said that the 
poets compose their praises according to the multiplicity 
of the natures of the beings whom they praise. ' ' 

It is true, no doubt, that this is the language of a 
philosophical theologian, not of an ancient poet. Yet 
these philosophical reflections belong to the fifth century 
before our era, if not to an earlier date ; and the first 
germs of such thoughts may be discovered in some of 
the Yedic hymns also. I have quoted abeady from the 
hymns such passages as * — '^ They speak of Mitra, 

* Eig-Veda I. 16d, 46; " Hibbert Lectures." p. 311. 



ii^Q LECTURE VII. 

Yarn^ia, Agni ; then he is the heavenly bird Garutmat ; 
that tohich is and is one the poets call in various ways ; 
they speak of Yama, Agni, Matari^van." 

In another hymn, in which the snn is likened to a 
bird, we read : '^ Wise poets represent by their words 
the bird who is one, in many ways."* 

All this is still tinged with mythology ; bnt there are 
other passages from which a pnrer light beams upon us, 
as when one poet asks : f 

* ^ Who saw him when he was first born, when he who 
has no bones bore him who has bones ? Where was the 
breath, the blood, the SeK of the world ? Who went to 
ask this from any that knew it ?" 

Here, too, the expression is still helpless, but though 
tlie flesh is weak, the spirit is very willing. TJie ex- 
pression, '^ He who has bones" is meant for that which 
has assumed consistency and form, the Yisible, as op- 
posed to that which has no bones, no body, no form, the 
Invisible, while ^^ breath, blood, and seK of the world" 
are but so many attempts at finding names and concepts 
for what is by necessity inconceivable, and therefore 
unnamable. 

In the second period of Yedic literature, in the so- 
called Brahma?z.as, and more particularly in what is 
called the Upanishads, or the Yedanta portion, these 
thoughts advance to perfect clearness and definiteness. 
Here the development of religious thought, which took 
its beginning in the hymns, attains to its fulfilment. 
The circle becomes complete. Instead of comprehend- 
ing the One by many names, the many names are now 
comprehended to be the One. The old names are 



* Kig-Veda X. 114,5 ; '' Hibbert Lectures," p. 313. 
f Eig-Veda I. 164, 4. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 267 

openly discarded ; even sncli titles as Prap'apati, lord of 
creatures, Yi^vakarman, maker of all things, DliatH, 
creator, are put aside as inadequate. The name now 
used is an expression of nothing but the purest and 
highest subjectiveness — it is At ni an, the Self, far more 
abstract than our E g o — the Self of all things, the Self of 
all tlie old mythological gods — for they were not mere 
names, but names intended for something — lastly, (the 
Self in which each individual self must find rest, must 
come to himself, must find his own true Self,- 

You may remember that I spoke to you in my first 
lecture of a boy who insisted on being sacrificed by his 
father, and who, when he came to Yama, the ruler of 
the departed, was granted three boons, and who then 
requested, as his third boon, that Yama should tell him 
what became of man after death. That dialogue forms 
part of one of the Upanishads, it belongs to the Yedan- 
ta, the end of the Yeda, the highest aim of the 
Yeda. I shall read you a few extracts from it. 

Yama, the King of the DejDarted, says : 

" Men who are fools, dwelling in ignorance, though 
wise in their own sight, and puffed up with vain 
knowledge, go round and round, staggering to and fro, 
like blind led by the blind. 

'^ The future never rises before the eyes of the care- 
less child, deluded by the delusions of wealth. This is 
the world, he thinks ; there is no other ; thus he falls 
again and again under my sway (the sway of death). 

'' The wise, who by means of meditating on his Self^ 
recognizes the Old (the old man within) who is difiiculfc 
to see, who has entered into darkness, who is hidden in 
the cave, who dwells in the abyss, as God, he indeed 
leaves joy and sorrow far behind. 

*^ That Self, the Knower, is not born, it dies not ; it 



268 LECTURE VII. 

came from nothing, it never became anything. The 
Old man is imborn, from everlasting to everlasting ; he 
is not killed, though the body be killed. 

'' That Self is smaller than small, greater than great ; 
hidden in the heart of the creature. A man who has no 
more desires and no more griefs, sees the majesty of the 
Self by the grace of the creator. 

" Though sitting still, he walks far ; though lying 
down, he goes everywhere. Who save myself is able to 
know that God, who rejoices, and rejoices not ? 

'^ That Self cannot be gained by the Yeda ; nor by 
the understanding, nor by much learning. He whom 
the Self chooses, by him alone the Self can be gained. 

'^ The Self chooses him as his own. But (he who has 
not first turned away from his wickedness, who is not 
calm and subdued, or whose mind is not at rest, he can 
never obtain the Self, even by knowledge.] 

'^ JSTo mortal lives by the breath that goes up and by 
the breath that goes down. We live by another, in 
whom both repose. 

" Well then, I shall tell thee this mystery, the eternal 
word (Brahman), and what happens to the Self, after 
reaching death. 

Some are born again, as living beings, others enter 
into stocks and stones, according to their work, and 
according to their knowledge. 

'' But he, the Highest Person, who wakes in us while 
we are asleep, shaping one lovely sight after another, 
he indeed is called the Light, he is called Brahman, he 
alone is called the Immortal. All worlds are founded 
on it, and no one goes beyond. TMs is that. 

'^ As the one fire, after it has entered the world, 
though one, becomes different according to what it 
bums, thus the One Self within all things, becomes 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 269 

different, according to whatever it enters, but it exists 
also apart. 

^' As the sun, the eye of the world, is not con- 
taminated by the external impurities seen by the eye, 
thus the One Self within all things is never contaminated 
by the sufferings of the world, being himself apart. 

'^ There is one eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal 
thoughts ; he, though one, fulfils the desires of many. 
The wise who perceive Him within their Self, to them 
belongs eternal life, eternal peace.* 

" "Whatever there is, the whole world, when gone 
forth (from Brahman), trembles in his breath. That 
Brahman is a great terror, like a drawn sword. Those 
who know it, become immortal. 

" He (Brahman) cannot be reached by speech, by 
mind, or by the eye. He cannot be apprehended, ex- 
cept by him who says, He is. 

''When all desires that dwell in the heart cease, then 
the mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman. 

''When all the fetters of the heart here on eai'th are 
broken, when all that binds us to this life is undone, 
then the mortal becomes immortal — here my teaching 
ends. ' ' 

This is what is called Yedanta, the Yeda-end, the end 
of the Yeda, and this is the religion or the philosophy, 
whichever you like to call it, that has lived on from 
about 500 B.C. to the present day. If the people of 
India can be said to have now any system of religion at 
all — apart from their ancestral sacrifices and their SrM- 
dhas, and apart from mere caste-observances — it is to 
be found in the Yedanta philosophy, the leading tenets 

* To Si (j>p6vT]/j,a rov ivvev/mToc fw^ koI elfirjvr]. See 9.1so Ruskin, 
'* Sesame," p. 63. 



270 LECTURE VII. 

of whicli are known, to some extent in every village.* 
That great revival of religion, whicli was inaugurated 
some fifty years ago by Kam-Mohun Roy, and is now 
known as the Brahma-Sama^, under the leadership of 
my noble friend Keshub Chunder Sen, was chiefly 
founded on the Upanishads, and was Yedantic in spirit. 
There is, in fact, an unbroken continuity between the 
most modern and the most ancient phases of Hindu 
thought, extending over more than three thousand years. 

To the present day India acknowledges no higher 
authority in matters of religion, ceremonial, customs, 
and law than the Yeda^ and so long as India is India, 
nothing will extinguish that ancient spirit of Yedantism 
which is breathed by every Hindu from his earliest 
youth, and pervades in various forms the prayers even 
of the idolater, the speculations of the philosopher, and 
the proverbs of the beggar. 

For purely practical reasons therefore — I -mean for the 
very practical object of knowing something of the secret 
springs which deteiTaine the character, the thoughts and 
deeds of the lowest as well as of the highest among the 
people in India — an acquaintance with their religion, 
which is founded on the Yeda, and with their philoso- 
phy, which is founded on the Yedanta, is highly desir- 
able. 

It is easy to make hght of this, and to ask, as some 
statesmen have asked, even in Europe, What has re- 
ligion, or what has philosophy, to do with politics ? In 
India, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, and 
notwithstanding the indifference on religious matters so 
often paraded before the world by the Indians them- 
selves, religion, and philosophy too, are great powers 

* Major Jacob, " Manual of Hindu Pantheism," Preface. 



VEDA AN"D VEDAKTA. 271 

still. Eead the account that has lately been published 
of two native statesmen, the administrators of two first- 
class states in Saurash^ra, Junagadh, and Bhavnagar, 
Gokulaji and Gauri^ankara,* and you will see whether 
the Yedanta is still a moral and a political power in 
India or not. 

But I claim even more for the Yedanta, and I recom- 
mend its study, not only to the candidates for the 
Indian Civil Service, but to all true students of philos- 
ophy. It will bring before them a view of life, different 
from all other views of life which are placed before us 
in the History of Philosophy. You saw how behind all 
the Devas or gods, the authors of the Upanishads dis- 
covered the Atman or Self. Of that Self they pred- 
icated three things only, that it is, that it perceives, 
and that it enjoys eternal bhss. All other predicates 
were negative : it is not this, it is not that — it is beyond 
anything that we can conceive or name. 

But that Self, that Highest Self, the Paramatman, 

* " Life and Letters of Gokulaji Sampattirama Zala and his views 
of the Vedanta, by Manassukharama Suryarama Tripa^/ii." Bombay, 

1881. 

As a young man Gokulaji, the son of a good family, learned Persian 
and Sanskrit. His chief interest in life, in the midst of a most suc- 
cessful political career, was the "Vedanta." A little insight, we are 
told, into this knowledge turned his heart to higher objects, promis- 
ing him freedom from grief, and blessedness, the highest aim of all. 
This was the turning-point of his inner life. When the celebrated 
Vedanti anchorite, Rama Bava, visited Junagadh, Gokulaji became his 
pupil. When another anchorite, Paramahansa Safc/cidananda, passed 
through Junagadh on a pilgrimage to Girnar, Gokulaji was regularly 
initiated in the secrets of the Vedanta. He soon became highly pro- 
ficient in it, and through the whole course of his life, whether in 
power or in disgrace, his belief in the doctrines of the Vedanta sup- 
ported him, and made him, in the opinion of English statesmen, the 
model of what a native statesman ought to be. 



272 LECTURE vri. 

conld be discovered after a severe moral and intellectual 
discipline only, and those who had not yet discovered it 
were allowed to worship lower gods, and to employ 
more poetical names to satisfy their hnman wants. 
Those who knew the other gods to be bnt names or 
persons — fersonae or masks, in the true sense of the 
word — pratikas, as they call them in Sanskrit — knew 
also that those who worshipped these names or persons, 
worshipped in truth the Highest SeK, though ignorantly. 
This is a most characteristic feature in the religious 
history of India. Even in the Bhagavadgita, a rather 
popular and exoteric exposition of Yedantic doctrines, 
the Supreme Lord or Bhagavat himself is introduced as 
saying : '' Even those who worship idols, worship me." * 
But that was not all. As behind the names of Agni, 
Indra, and Prap'apati, and behind all the mythology of 
nature, the ancient sages of India had discovered the 
Atman — let us call it the objective SeK — they perceived 
also behind the veil of the body, behind the senses, behind 
the mind, and behind om' reason (in fact behind the my- 

* Professor Kuenen discovers a similar idea in the words placed in 
the mouth of Jehovah by the prophet Malachi, i. 14 : " For I am a 
great King, and my name is feared among the heathen." " The ref- 
erence," he says, " is distinctly to the adoration already offered to 
Yahweh by the people, whenever they serve their own gods with true 
reverence and honest zeal.* Even in Deuteronomy the adoration of 
these other gods by the nations is represented as a dispensation of 
Yahweh. Malachi goes a step further, and accepts their worship as a 
tribute which in reality falls to Yahweh — to Him, the Only True. 
Thus the opposition between Yahweh and the other gods, and after- 
ward between the one true God and the imaginary gods, makes room 
here for the still higher conception that the adoration of Yahweh is 
the essence and the truth of all religion." '' Hibbert Lectures," p. 
181. 

* There is, we believe, not the slightest authority for reading Malachi in this way ; 
any reader of the Old Testament is competent to judge for himself .—Am. Pubs. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 273 

tliologj of the soul, which we often call psychology), 
another Atman, or the subjective Self. That Self too 
was to be discovered by a severe moral and intellectual 
discipline only, and those who wished to find it, who 
wished to know, not themselves, but their Self, had to 
cut far deeper than the senses, or the mind, or the 
reason, or the ordinary Ego. All these too were Devas, 
bright apparitions — mere names — yet names meant for 
something. Much that was most dear, that had seemed 
for a time their very self, had to be surrendered, before 
they could find the Self of Selves, the Old Man, the 
Looker-on, a subject independent of all personaHty, an 
existence independent of all hfe. 

When that point had been reached, then the highest 
knowledge began to dawn, the Self within (the Pratya- 
gatman) was drawn toward the Highest Self (the Para- 
matman), it found its true self in the Highest Self, and 
the oneness of the subjective with the objective Self 
was recognized as underlying all reahty, as the dim 
dream of religion — as the pure light of philosophy. 

This fundamental idea is worked out with systematic 
completeness in the Yedanta philosophy, and no one 
who can appreciate the lessons contained in Berkeley's 
philosophy, will read the Upanishads and the Brahma- 
sutras, and their commentaries without feehng a richer 
and a wiser man. 

I admit that it requires patience, discrimination, and 
a cei-tain amount of self-denial before we can discover 
the grains of solid gold in the dark mines of Eastern 
philosophy. It is far easier and far more amusing for 
shallow critics to point out what is absurd and ridiculous 
in the religion and philosophy of the ancient world than 
for the earnest student to discover truth and wisdom 
under strange disguises. Some progress, however, has 



^ 



^74--^- LECTURE YII. 

been made, even during tlie short span of life that we 
can remember. The Sacred Books of the East are no 
longer a mere bntt for the invectives of missionaries or 
the sarcasms of philosophers. They have at last been rec- 
ognized as historical documents, ay, as the most ancient 
documents in the history of the human mind, and as 
palseontological records of an evolution that begins to 
elicit wider and deeper sympathies than the nebular 
formation of the planet on which we dwell for a season, 
or the organic development of that chrysalis which we 
call man. 

If you think that I exaggerate, let me read you in 
conclusion what one of the greatest philosophical critics * 
— and certainly not a man given to admiring the thoughts 
of others — says of the Yedanta, and more particularly of 
the Upanishads. Schopenhauer writes : 

'' In the whole world there is no stady so beneficial 
and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been 
the solace of my life — it will be the solace of my death. ' 'f 

I have thus tried, so far as it was possible in one 
course of lectures, to give you some idea of ancient 
India, of its ancient literature, and, more particularly, 
of its ancient religion. My object was, not merely to 
place names and facts before you, these you can find in 
many published books, but, if possible, to make you see 
and feel the general human interests that are involved in 

* The author's enthusiasm has carried him beyond bounds. The 
weight to be given to Schopenhauer's opinion touching any religious 
subject may be measured by the following quotation : " The hap- 
piest moment of life is the completest forgetfulness of self in sleep, 
and the wretchedest is the most wakeful and conscious." — ^Am, Pubs. 

f " Sacred Books of the East," vol. i, "The Upanishads," trans- 
lated by M. M. ; Introduction, p. Ixi. 



VEDA AKD VBDAITTA. ^75 

that ancient chapter of the history of the human race. 
I wished that the Yeda and its religion and philosophy 
should not only seem to you curious or strange, but that 
you should feel that there was in them something that 
concerns ourselves, something of our own intellectual 
growth, some recollections, as it were, of our own child- 
hood, or at least of the childhood of our own race. I 
feel convinced that, placed as we are here in this life, we 
have lessons to learn from the Yeda, quite as important 
as the lessons we learn at school from Homer and Yirgil, 
and lessons from the Yedanta quite as instructive as the 
systems of Plato or Spinoza. 

I do not mean to say that everybody who wishes to 
know how the human race came to be what it is, how 
language came to be what it is, how religion came to be 
what it is, how manners, customs, laws, and forms of 
government came to be what they are, how we ourselves 
came to be what we are, must learn Sanskrit, and must 
study Yedic Sanskrit. But I do believe that not to 
know what a study of Sanskrit, and particularly a study 
of the Yeda, has already done for illuminating the 
darkest passages in the history of the human mind, of 
that mind on which we ourselves are feeding and living, 
is a misfortune, or, at all events, a loss, just as I should 
count it a loss to have passed through life without 
knowing something, however little, of the geological 
formation of the earth, or of the sun, and the moon, and 
the stars — and of the thought, or the will, or the law, 
that govern their movements. 



Il^DEX. 



A. 



Abba Seen river, 192. 
Abkaiaman, 74. 
Abtj Fazl, on the Hindus, 75, 
Active side of human nature in Eu- 
rope, 120. 
Aditi, meaning of, 215. 
Aditya, 158. 
Adittas, 215. 
Adrogha, 83. 
Aerial gods, 168. 

Afghanistan, 159 ; inhabitants of, 189. 
Agui, god of fire, 167. 
Agui-ignis, fire, 41 ; as a terrestrial 

deity, 195. 
AiTAREYA Brahmana, on heaven and 

earth, 175. 
Alexander the Great, 37 ; changes 

the name of a river, 191. 
All-Sacrifice, the, 85. 
Alphabet, the, whence derived, 36 ; 

Ionian and Phoenician, 222 ; two used 

in Azolca's inscription, 225. 
Amitabha worship, 106. 
Anaxagoras, his doctrine, 177. 
Ancestors, spirits of, 238 ; worship of, 

239. 
Animism:, 130. 

AURITA, 83. 

Arch^ologioal survey of India, 26. 

Arrian, on the Hindus, 73 ; rivers 

known to, 191. 
Aryans, the, our intellectual relatives, 

33 ; seven branches of, 41 ; found in 
■ Sanskrit literature, 116 ; religion of, 

161. 
AsMi, I am, 43. 
Asoka, King, 96 ; adopts Buddhism, 

106 ; author of the first inscriptions, 

225 ; language of the same, 234. 
Astronomy, ancient, in India, 114 ; in 

the Veda, 150 ; in China, 151. 
Atman, the Self, 265. 
Avataras of Vishnu, three, 153. 

B. 

Babylonian division of time, 36 ; in- 
fluences on Vedic poems, 145 ; on 
Vedic astronomy, 147 ; zodiac, 158. 

Barzoi, 114. 

Bastian, on the Polynesian myths, 169. 



Bengal, the people of, 55 ; villages of, 
65 ; schools in, 80. 

Bengali, 161. ^ 

Bhagavadgita, 272. 

Bhagavat, supreme lord, 272. 

Bimetallic currency, 37. 

Bhishma, death of, 83. 

Bible, the, Sanskrit words in, 28 ; and 
the Jewish race, 140. 

Bibliographical survey of India, 102. 

Books read by ancient nations com- 
pared with modern, 137. 

Bopp, his comparative grammar, 46. 

Brahma sacrifice, 249. 

Brahma Samaj, of India, 163. 

Brahmana, 162. 

Brahmanas, on truth, 84 ; as a class, 
256. 

Buddha and the popular dialects, 96. 

Buddhism, chief source of our fables, 
27 ; striking coincidences with Chiis- 
tianity, 108 ; its rise, 234. 

Burnouf, 115. 



Cabul river, 192. 

C^sAR, on the Druids and their memo- 
rizing, 233. 

Canaan, 140. 

Carlylb, his opinion of historical 
works, 16. 

Caste, origin of, 117 ; in the laws of 
Manu, 117 ; in the Kig-Veda, 117. 

Cat, the domestic, its original home, 
42. 

China, origin of the name, 151 ; chron- 
icles of, 104 ; lunar stations of, 150 ; 
aspects of religion, 264. 

Christian religion, the, and the Jew- 
ish race, 35. 

Civil service examinations, Indian, 20. 

Climatic influences on morals and so- 
cial life, 120. 

Coins of India, 26. 

Colebrooke's religious ceremonies, 
247. 

Commercial honor in India, 82. 

Commerce between India and Syria in 
Solomon's time, 28. 

Commercial writing, 225. 

Confucius, a hard student, 230. 



278 



IKDEX. 



Conquerors of India, 30. 
CouLANQBS, Professor, his opinion on 

religious beliefs, 245. 
Cctnningham's Ancient Geography of 

India, 192. 
Cylinders of Babylon, 139. 



D. 



Dacoits, 79. 

Darwin, 141. 

Dawn, the, 173. 

Dayananda's introduction to the Rig- 
Veda, 104. 

Deluge, the, 153 ; in Hindu literature, 
154 ; not borrowed from the Old Tes- 
tament, 157; its natural origin, 159. 

Departed spirits, 237 ; honors paid to, 
240 ; ceremonies to, 246. 

Deva, 159, the meaning of, 236. 

Devapatuis, wives of the gods, 164. 

Devapi's prayer for rain, 204. 

Development of human character in 
India and Europe, 118. 

Dialects in Asoka's time, 106. 

DiPHTHERA, 222. 

Divi Manes, 240. 

Donkey, in the lion's skin, 27 ; in the 

tiger's skin, 28. 
Druids, their memory, 233. 
Dyaus and Zeus, 213. 

E. 

flABAUI, 158. 

East, the, our original home, 49. 
Ecliptic, Indian, 153. 
Education of the human race, 107. 
Education in India, by training the 

memory, 232. 
Egyptian hieroglyphics preserved in 

the alphabet, 36. 
Elphinstone, Mountstnart, his opinion 

of the Hindus, 77. 
English officers in India, 69. 
English oriental scholars, a list of, 22. 
Eos andUshas, 201. 
EsTHONiAN prayer to Picker, the god of 

thunder, 211. 
Euripides, on the marriage of heaven 

and earth, 177. 
Examinations, work produced at, 20. 



F. 



Paeles, migration of, 27. 

Falsehood, no mortal sin, five cases 
of, 89. 

Fathers, Hymn to the, 241. 

Finite, the, impossible without the in- 
finite, 126. 

Fire, names for, 41 ; as a civilizer, 195 ; 
a terrestrial deity, 195 ; why wor- 
shipped, 196. 

Five nations, the, 117. 

Five sacrifices, religious duties, 249. 

Fravashis, in Persia, 240. 

Frederick the Great, 34. 



Friar Jordanus, opinion of Hindu char- 
acter, 75. 

Funeral ceremonies, 248 ; an earlier 
worship, 252 ; striking coincidences, 
253 ; burial and cremation, 253. 



G. 



Gain AS, language of, 97. 

Galileo, his theory, 135. 

Ganges, sources of, 96 ; its tributaries, 
187. 

Gataka, 30. 

Gathas, 107. 

Gautama allows a lie, 88. 

Germany, study of Sanskrit in, 22. 

Gems, the nine, 114. 

Gill, Kev. W., myths and songs of the 
South Pacific, 169 ; savage life in 
Polynesia, 233. 

Gods in the Veda, their testimony for 
truth, 83 ; the number of, 164 ; river 
gods and goddesses, 167 ; made and 
unmade by men, 182 ; growth of a di- 
vine conception in the human mind, 
198. 

Golden Rule, the, 92. 

Goethe's West-Ostlicher Divan, 22. 

GoKULAji, the model native statesman, 
271. 

Grassman, translation of Sanskrit 
words, 183. 

Greek alphabet, age of, 221. 

Greek literature, its study and use, 
23 ; when first written, 222. 

Greek deities, their physical origin, 
129. 

Greek philosophy our model, 38. 

Greek and Latin, similarity between, 
40. 

Grimm, identification of Parganya and 
Pertn, 210. 

Growth of ancient religions, 128. 

Grunau on old Prussian gods, 210. 

GuiDE-BooKS, Greek, 223. 

Gymnosophists, Indian, 123. 



H. 



Hardy, his Manual of Buddhism, 97. 

Hastings, Warren, and the Darics, 216; 
opinion of Hindu character, 79. 

Hebrew religion, foreign influences in, 
145. 

Heber, Bishop, opinion of the Hindus, 
79. 

Heaven and Earth, 169 ; Maori legend 
of, 173 ; Vedic legends of, 175 ; Greek 
legends of, 176 ; epithets for, in Veda, 
178 ; as seen by Vedic poets, 178. 

Henotheism, 166. 

Herodotus, 223. 

Hindus, truthful character of, 52 ; the 
charge of their untruthfulness refuted, 
53 ; origin of the charge, 54 ; difEerent 
races and characteristics of, 55 ; tes- 
timony of trustworthy witnesses, 55 ; 
their litigiousuess, 60 ; their treat- 



INDEX. 



279 



ment by Mohammedan conquerors, 
72 ; reason for unfavorable opinion 
of, 76 ; their commercial honor, 82 ; 
their real character transcendent, 126 ; 
their religion, 127 ; sacrifices and 
priestly rites, 148 ; knowledge of as- 
tronomy, 153; first acquainted with 
an alphabet, 224. 

HrNDUSTANI, 95. 
HiRANTAGHARBA, 164. 

History, its object and study, 34 ; its 
true sense, 44. 

HiTOPADESA, fables of, 110. 

Hottentot river names, 188. 

Homeric hymns, 140; heaven and 
earth in the, 176. 

Human Mind, study of, India impor- 
tant for, 33. 

Humboldt, Alexander von, onKalidasa, 
110. 

Hydaspes, 192. 

Hydraotis, or Hyarotis, 191. 

Hypasis, or Hyphasis, 191. 



Ida, 156. 

Idrisi, on the Hindus, 74. 

Ijjar, April-May, 158. 

India, what it can teach us, 19 ; a para- 
dise, 24 ; its literature a corrective, 
24 ; past and present aspects of, 25 ; 
its scientific ireasuree, 25 ; a laboratory 
for all students, 32 ; its population and 
vast extent, 142. 

Indra, god of the wind, the Vedic Ju- 
piter, 83; the Aryan guide, 116; the 
god of the thunderstorm, 168 ; as cre- 
ator, 180 ; the principal god of the 
Veda, 198; peculiar to India, 201. 

Indus, The river, 167. 

Infinite, The, 126. 

Inner Life, Influence of Indian litera- 
ture upon our, 24. 

Inscriptions in India, 225. 

lONiANS, The, their alphabet, 222 ; first 
writing, 223. 

I-tsing, his visit to India, 229 ; his ac- 
count of Buddhist priests, 229 ; of 
education, 230 ; of perfection of mem- 
ory, 231 ; of Brahmaus, 231. 

Izdubar, or Nimrod, the poem of, 158. 



J. 



Jehovah, 200. 

Jews, The, as a race, 36 ; their religion 

as related to Oriental religions, 36 ; 

necessary to a study of the Christian 

religion, 35; the beginning and growth 

of their religion, 128. 
Jones, Sir William, his voyage to India, 

49 ; his dreams become realities, 50. 
Joshua's battle, 200. 
Journals, Sanskrit, now published in 

India, 98. 
Judgment of Solomon, 30. 



Junagadh, 271. 
Jupiter, 201. 
Jumna, the river, 190. 
Jurisprudence in India, 30. 
Justice of the Indians, 74. 



K. 



Kaxidasa, the poet, his age, 110 ; plays 
of. 111. 

Kamal-eddin Abderrazak, on the Hin- 
dus, 75. 

Kausika, punished for truthfulness, 89. 

Kanishka, the Sakaking, 106. 

Kanjur, the women and the child in 
the, 29. 

Kathaka, or reader, 158. 

Kathenotheism, 166. 

Keshub Chunder Sen, his grandfather, 
59. 

KiNAs, or Chinese, 151. 

Koran, oaths on, 70. 

Krumu, 185. 

Kshatriyas, 232. 

Ktesias, on the justice of the Indians, 
72. 

Ktisis^ 223. 

Kubha, 185. 

KuLLAVAGGA, quotation from the, 96. 

KuENEN, Professor, on worship of Yah- 
weh, 272. 



Ladak, 192. 

Lakshmana, 86. 

Lares familiares in Rome, 240. 

Lassen, 151. 

Law books of India, 30. 

Life, Indian and European views of, 

121 ; beautiful sentiments of, from 

Hindu writings, 124 ; a journey, 120. 
Law of Nature, 263. 
Laws of Manu, 111. 
Liberal, The, Keshub Chunder Sen's 

organ, 99. 
Liberal education, the elements of, 3S. 
Lightning, son of Parganya, 205. 
Literature, written, 224. 
LiTUANiA, 209 ; its language, 209 ; its 

god of rain, 210 ; prayer to the same, 

211. 
Loqographi, 223. 
Lost Tribes, The, of Israel, 159. 
Ludlow on village schools in India, 80. 
LuDwiG, translation of Sanskrit words, 

187. 
Lunar stations, 150. 
Lunar zodiac, 147. 



M. 



Mahabharata. an epic poem, speaks 

for the truth, 88 ; yet recited, 99. 
Mahmud of Guzin, 72. 



280 



IKDEX. 



Maine, Sir Henry, 65. 

Malcolm, Sir John, on the Hindus, 55. 

Maua, a golden, 146. 

Maitavas, The laws of, on evil-doers, 
93. 

Mangaia, 170. 

Manning, Judge, 173. 

Manu, his code of laws, 30 ; their true 
age. 111 ; his connection with the del- 
uge, 155. 

Manuscripts, the first collectors of, 
224. 

Maori Genesis, 173. 

Maruts, the storm-gods, 199. 

Maui, son of Ru, 171 ; legend of, 171 ; 
its origin, 173. 

Megasthenes on village life, 65 ; on 
Hindu honesty, 72. 

Melanippe, 177. 

Memory, power of, 232. 

Metamorphic changes in religions, 128. 

Mill, History of India, 59 ; estimate of 
Hindu character, 60. 

MiNA, its weight, 125. 

MiTRA, 156 ; invoked, 215. 

Modern Sanskrit literature, 107. 

Mohammedans, their opinion of the 
Hindus, 75 ; the number of sects, 76 ; 
treatment of Hindus, 90. 

Monotheism in the Veda, 164. 

Morality, our, Saxon, 38. 

Moral depravity in India, 93. 

Munro, Thomas, Sir, opinion of Hin- 
dus, 61. 

MtJLLER, Mas, his teachers, 45 ; inter- 
course with Hindus, 81 ; opinion of 
their character, 82. 



N. 



Nakshatras, The twenty-seven, 148. 
Nakta and Nyx, 201. 

Nala, no. 

Native scholars, 81. 
Nearchus, 225. 

New and Full-Moon Sacrifices, 252. 
New Testament. Kevised Edition, 141. 
Neavspapers, Sanskrit, 98. 
Nine gems or classics, 115. 
Northern conquerors, 106. 
Numerals in Sanskrit, 46. 



Os, oris, 44. 
OUDE, 189. 
OURANAS, 213. 



p. 



Pahlavi, translation of the Pafikatantra 

into, 115. 
Palestine, 33. 
Pali dialect, 107. 
Pandits, 57 ; Professor Wilson on the, 

58. 
Panini, 230. 
PaSkatantra, 114. 
Papyros, 224. 

Parganya, 202 ; hymn to, 205 ; deriva- 
tion of name, 207. 
Parvana Sraddha, 260. 
Periegesis, 223. 
Periodos, 223. 

Periplus, or circumnavigations, 222. 
Perjury, common in India, 71. 
Perrons, thunder, 210. 
Perkuna, 212. 
Perkunas, Lituanian god of thunder, 

210. 
Perkuno, 212. 

Persians, what we owe to, 36. 
Petersburgh Dictionary, 183. 
Phcenicians, what we owe to, 36 ; their 

letters, 222. 
Pinda-pitriyag^a, 251. 
PiPAL tree, 50. 

PiTRis, the fathers, 239 ; invoked, 241. 
PitriyagSa-sacrifices, 248. 
Plato, 142. 

Pliny, Indian rivers known to, 191. 
Political communities, 31. 
Polytheism, the kind of, in the Veda, 

165. 
PosiTivisT sentiments of a Brahman, 

87. 
Primitive man, 133. 
Prayers for rain, 205; for the dead, 

262. 
Prometheus and Pramantha, 195. 
Proto-aryan language, 43. 
Ptolemy, 36. 
Pumice-stone, 171. 
PuN.JAB, the, rivers of the, 183. 
PURANAS, 162. 



O. 



Oath, Taking an, in village communi- 
ties, 68 ; its understanding by the Hin- 
dus, 69 ; fear of punishment connected 
with, 70. 

Old Testament, 140. 

Ophir, 28. 

Orange River, 188. 

Oriental scholars, names and works 
hardly known, 22. 

Orissa, 96. 

Orme, 60. 

Orpheus and Ribhu, 201. 



E. 

Raghu, 86. 

Rajendralal Mitra, on sacrifices, 251. 

Rama, on truth, 87. 

Rama Bava, the anchorite, 271. 

Ram AY ANA, the plot of, 86 ; yet recited, 

99. 
Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 158. 
Readers not numerous in ancient or 

modem times, 141. 
Recitation of the old epics in India, 

99. 
Religion, its home in India, 31 ; our 

debt to Oriental religions, 36; its 



IKDEX. 



281 



transcendent character, 126 ; meta- 
morphic changes in, 128 ; began in 
trust, not in fear, 197. 

Remusat on the Goths, 104. 

Renaissance period in India, 110. 

Revival of religion in India, 270. 

RiBHU and Orpheus, 201. 

Rig-Veda, editions of, now publishing, 
98 ; known by heart, 99 ; a treasure 
to the anthropologist, 134 ; character 
of its poems, 143 ; its religion primi- 
tive, lA ; compliment to the author 
for hia edition of, 163 ; the number of 
hymns in, 163 ; age of the oldest man- 
uscripts, 221 ; total number of words 
in, 228 ; how transmitted, 231. 

RiNGOLD, Duke of Lituania, 209. 

RiSHis, The Vedic, 168; question of 
earth's origin, 180 ; their intoxicating 
beverage, 243. 

Rita, the third Beyond, 263. 

RivEBS, 38 deities, 182 ; hymn to, 183 ; 
names of, in India, 185. 

River systems of Upper India, 188. 

Robertson's Historical Disquisitions, 
60. 

Ru, the sky-supporter, 170 ; his bones, 
171 ; why pumice-stone, 173. 

RiJcKERT's Weisheit der Brahmanen, 
22. 

RuDRA, the howler, 199. 



S. 



S, pronounced as h, in Iranic languages, 
189. 

Sacrifices, priestly, 148; daily and 
monthly, 248. 

Sakas, invasion of the, 104. 

Sakuntala, her appeal to conscience, 
90. 

Sanskrit language, its study differ- 
entljr appreciated, 21 ; use of studying, 
23 ; its supreme importance, 39 ; its 
antiquity, 40 ; its family relations, 40 ; 
its study ridiculed, 45 ; its linguisitic 
influence, 46 ; its moral influence, 47 ; 
a dead language, 96 ; early dialects of, 
96 ; still influential, 97 ; scholars' use 
of, 98 ; journals in, 96 ; all living lan- 
guages in India draw their life from, 
100. 

Sanskrit literature, human interest 
of, 95 ; the literature of India, 99 ; 
manuscripts existing, 102; divisions 
of, 104 ; character of the ancient and 
the modern, 107 ; known in Persia, 
113 ; a new start in, 115 ; its study very 
profitable, 275. 

Satapatha Brahmana, 91. 

Schopenhauer, on the Upanishads, 

2^o. 

Seasons, how regulated, 148. 
Self-knowledge, the highest eoal of 

the Veda, 125. 
SiNDHU, the Indus river, 183 ; address 

to, 184 ; meaning of, 189. 



Sleeman, Colonel, his rambles and rec- 
ollections, 60 ; his life in village com- 
munities, 63 ; his opinion of Hindus, 
67. 

Solar myths, 216. 

Solomon's judgment compared, 29. 

Spencer, Herbert, on ancestor worship, 
239 ; his misstatement corrected, 240, 

Sraddhas, or Love Feasts, 248 ; to the 
departed, 2.54 ; their source, 257 ; their 
number, 258 ; striking resemblance, 
261. 

SUDAS, 200. 

Sun, the central thought in Aryan my- 
thology, 216. 

SuRTA, god of the sun, 168. 



T. 



Tamil, 95. 

Tane-Mahuta, forest-god, 174. 

Taras, the stars, 151. 

Terrestrial gods, 169. 

Teutonic mythology, 166. 

Theogony, 235. 

Th6kr, 166. 

Three beyonds, 220. 

Thsin dynasty, 152. 

Thugs, 63. 

Tortoise, the story of the, 154. 

Towers of Silence, 22. 

Towns, names of, in India, 189. 

Trot, siege of, 172. 

Truth, root meaning in Sanskrit, 82. 

Truthfulness, a luxury, 91. 

Turanian invasion, 104. 

Two women and child, story of, 29. 

TtR and Tin, 213. 



U. 



Ugvis, Lithuanian, 41. 
Universities, the object of their teach- 
ing, 19. 
Untruthfulness of the Hindus, 53. 
Upanishads, 267 ; their beauty, 273. 
Uranos and Varuna, 201. 
Urvasi, 110. , 

UsHAS and Eos, 202. 
Uttabapaksha, 136. 



V. 



Vaga, 183 ; as plural, 184. 

Vaisvadeva, offering, 249. 

Vaisya, a, 162. 

Vak, wife of Vata, 165. 

Valmiki, the poet, 100. 

Varahamihara, 112. 

Varuna, 156 ; hymns to, 204. 

Vasishtha, on righteousness, 93. 

Vata, the wind, 200 ; and Wotan, 201. 

Veda, their antiquity. 101 ; silly con- 
ceptions, 118 ; religion of, 129 ; ne- 
cessary to the study of man, 133 ; 



282 



INDEX. 



objections to, 135; native character 
of," 159 ; lessons of, 161 ; use of their 
study, 162 ; character of their poetrj% 
182; knowledge of God progressive 
in, 194 ; their hymns, a specimen, 
205 ; their gods, number of, 219 ; 
meaning of their names, 220 ; three 
periods in their literature, 234 ; three 
religions in, 236. 

Vbdic Mythology, its influence, 27 ; 
contrasts, 169. 

Veda-end, 267. 

Vedanta philosophy, 265 ; the present 
religion in India. 269 ; its prevalence, 
270; commended to students, 271 ; its 
highest knowledge, 273. 

ViDALA, cat, 42. 

ViHARAS, or colleges, the ancient, 26. 

ViKRAiiADiTTA, 110 ; his Varied experi- 
ence, 113. 

Village communities in India, 64 ; 
large number of, 65 ; morality in, 67. 

ViSVARKAMAN, 157. 

Vtasa, the poet, 100. 



W. 

"Warriors, native and foreign, 116. 
Waters, divers gods of the, 167. 
Wkasel and the woman, 28. 
Wilson. Prof., on the Hindus, 57. 
Witnesses, three classes of, 69. 
Wolf, F. A., his questions, 221 ; his 

dictnm, 223. 
Workingjien, 116. 



Worship of the dead, 240. 
Wot an and Vata, 201. 
Writing unknown in ancient India, 
226. 



X. 



Xanthos, the Lydian, 223. 



Y. 



Yag, ishta, 208. 

Yagnadattabadha, 110. 

YagSavalkya, on virtue, 92. 

Yahweh, worthip of, 272. 

Yama, lord of the departed, 85 ; on im- 
mortality, 86 ; invoked, 242 ; as the 
first man, 242 ; dialogue on death, 
267. 

Yaska, division of the Vedic gods, 168. 

Yijeh-chi, The, and the Goths, 104. 



Z. 



Zexts, 129 ; the survivor of Dyaus, 213 ; 
the interval between, 235. 

Zeus, Dyaus, and Jupiter, 198. 

ZiMMER," Prof., on polytheism, 166 ; 
translation of Sanskrit words, 185. 

Zodiacal signs, known to Sanskrit as- 
tronomers, 114. 

Zodiac, The Bablyonian, 147. 

Zoroastrianism, 31. 



283 



THE STANDARD LIBRARY. 

TUEIK STERLING WORTB. 

OJPIISriONS OF CRITICS. 



I. 



Life of Cromwell. 



NEW YORK SVN: 

"Mr. Hood's biography is a positive 
boon to the mass of readers, because it 
presents a more correct view of the great 
soldier than any of the shorter lives 
published, whether we compare it v/ith 
Southey's, Guizot's, or even Forster's." 
PACIFIC CHUItCH3IA.K, San 
Francisco : 

" The fairest and most readable of the 
numerous biographies of Cromwell." 
GOOD IjITERATTIRE, New York : 

" If all these books will prove as fresh 
and readable as Hood's ' Cromwell,' the 
literary merit of the series will be as high 
as the price is low." 
NEW YORK DAIZY GRAPH- 
IC: 

"Hood's 'Cromwell 'is an excellent 
account of the great Protector. Crom- 
well was the heroic servant of a sublime 
cause. A complete sketch of the man 
and the period." 
CHRISTIAN UNION, New York : 

" A valuable biography of Cromwell, 
told with interest in every part and with 
such condensation and skill in arrange- 
ment that prominent events are made 
clear to all." 



SCHOOL JOURNAL, New York: 
" Mr. Hood's style is pleasant, clear, 
and flowing, and he sets forth and holds 
his own opinion well." 

EPISCOPAL RECORDER, Phil- 
adelphia : 
"An admirable and able Life of Oli- 
ver Cromwell, of which we can unhesi- 
tatingly speak words of praise." 

NEW YORK TELEGRAM : 

"Full of the kind of information with 
which even the well-read like to refresh 
themselves." 

INDIANAPOLIS SEJSTINEL, 
Ind. : 

" The book is one of deep interest. 
The style is good, the analysis searching, 
and will add much to the author's fame 
as an able biographer." 
THE WORKMAN, Pittsburgh, Pa. : 

"This book tells the story of Crom- 
well's life in a captivating way. It reads 
like a romance. The paper and print- 
ing are very attractive." 

NEW YORK HERALD : 

" The book is one of deep interest. 
The style is good, the analysis search- 
ing." 



II. 



Science in Short Chapters. 



JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, 

Boston : 
" ' Science in Short Chapters ' supplies 
a growing want among a large class of 



busy people, who have not time to con- 
sult scientific treatises. Written in clear 
and simple style. Very interesting and 
instructive." 



284 



ACAJDEMT, London, England : 

"Mr. Williams has presented these 
scientific subjects to the popular mind 
with much clearness and force. It may 
be read with advantage by those without 
special scientific training." 
MJELiaiO US TELES C OPE, Day- 
ton, Ohio : 
"It is historic, scientific, and racy. A 
book of intense practical thought, which 
one wishes to read carefully and then 
read again." 

NEW YORK SCSOOIj JOTTR- 
yjLL: 

"A volume of handy science, not 
only interesting as an abstract subject, 
but valuable for its clear expositions of 
every-day science. Of Professor Will- 
iams as an authority upon such subjects, 
it is unnecessary to comment. He al- 
ready has a fame as a scientific writer 
which needs no recommendation." 
JPAIjIj MALZ GAZ ETTEfLondon, 
England : 

" Original and of scientific value." 



GRAPHIC, London : 

" Clear, simple, and profitable." 
CANADA BAPTIST, Toronto : 

" A rich book at a marvellously low 
price. The style is sprightly and sim- 
ple. Every chapter contains something 
we all want to know." 

NEWARK DAILY ADVER- 
TISER,'^. J.: 

" As an educator this book is worth a 
year's schooling, and it will go where 
schools of a high grade cannot penetrate. 
For such a book twenty-five cents seems 
a ridiculous sum." 

J". W. BASHFORD, Auburndale, 
Mass. : 

"A marvellous book, as fascinating as 
Dickens, to be consulted as an authority 
along with Britannica, and even fuller 
of practical hints than the latter' s ar- 
ticles. I do not know how you can 
print its 300 pages for 25 cents." 
AMERICAN, Philadelphia : 

"Mr. Williams' work is a practical 
compendium." 



III. 



The American Humorist. 



COMMERCIAL GAZETTE, Cin 

cinnati, Ohio : 

"It is finely critical and appreciative ; 
exceedingly crisp and unusually enter- 
taining from first to last." 
CHRl STIA N INTELLIGEN- 
CER, New York : 

"A book of pleasant reading, with 
enough sparkle in it to cure any one of 
the blues." 

CONGREGATIONALIST, Bos- 
ton : 

" They are based upon considerable 
study of these authors, are highly ap- 
preciative in tone, and show a percep- 
tivity of American humor which is yet a 
rarity among Englishmen." 

SALEM TIMES, Mass.: 

"No writer in England was, in all 
respects, better qualified to write a book 
on American Humorists than Haweis." 



CHRISTIAN tlOURNAL, To- 
ronto : 
"We have been specially amused with 
the chapter on poor Artemus Ward, 
which we read on a railway journey. 
We fear our fellow-passengers would 
think something ailed us, for laugh we 
did, in spite of all attempts to preserve 
a sedate appearance." 

OCCIDENT, San Francisco : 

" This book is pleasant reading, with 
sparkle enough in it— as the writer is him- 
self a wit— to cure one of the 'blues.' " 
DAN BURY NEWS, Conn.: 

" Mr. Haweis gives a brief bibliograph- 
ical sketch of each writer mentioned in 
the book, an analysis of his style, and 
classifies each into a distinct type from 
the others. He presents copious ex- 
tracts from their works, making an ©Ht 
tertaining book." 



285 



CENTRAIj baptist, St. Louis : 

" A perusal of this volume will give the 
reader a more correct idea of the charac- 
ter discussed than he would probably 
get from reading their biographies. The 
lecture is analytical, penetrative, terse, 
incisive, and candid. The boolc is worth 
its price, and will amply repay reading.'" 

SCaoOI, JOTJRNAIj, New York: 

"Terse and brief as the soul of wit 
itself." 

INniANJLPOIjIS SENTINEL, 

Indiana : 
"It presents, in fine setting, the wit 
and wisdom of Washington Irving, Oliver 
W. Holmes, James R. Lowell, Artemus 
Ward, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte, and 
does it con arnorey 



THE MAIL, Toronto, Ont. : 

"Eev. H. R. Haweis is a writer too 
well-known to need commendation at 
our hands for, at least, his literary style. 
The general result is that not a page re- 
pels us and not a sentence tires. We 
find ourselves drawn pleasantly along in 
just the way we want to go ; all our 
favorite points remembered, all our own 
pet phrases praised, and the good things 
of each writer brought forward to re- 
fresh one's memory. In fine, the book 
is a most agreeable companion." 
LJJTHERAN OBSERVEB, VhUa.- 
delphia : 
" The peculiar style, the mental char- 
acter, and the secret of success, of each 
of these prominent writers, are presented 
with great clearness and discrimination." 



IV. 



Liyes of Illustrious Shoemakers. 



WESTERN CHRISTIAN AD- 
VOCATE, Cincinnati : 

"When we first took up this volume 
we were surprised that anybody should 
attempt to make a book with precisely 
this form and title. But as we read its 
pages we were far more surprised to 
find them replete with interest and in- 
struction. It should be sold by the 
scores of thousands." 
PRESBTTESIAN OBSERVER, 
Baltimore : 

" The writer of this book well under- 
stands how to write biography— a gift 
vouchsafed only to a few." 
NEW YORK HERALD: 

" The sons of St. Crispin have always 
been noted for independence of thought 
in politics and in religion ; and Mr. 
Winks has written a very readable ac- 
count of the lives of the more famous of 
the craft. The book is quite interest- 
ing." 

D ANBURY NEWS, Conn. : 

'•The Standard Libeart has been 
enriched by this addition." 



LITERARY WORLD, London: 

•■' The pages contain a great deal of in- 
teresting material — remarkable episodes 
of experience and history." 

BOSTON GLOBE: 

" A valuable book, containing much in- 
teresting matter and an encouragement 
to self-help." 

^RISTIAN STANDARD, Cin- 
cinnati : 

" It will inspire a noble ambition, and 
may redeem many a life from failure." 
CHRISTIAN SECRETARY, Hart- 
ford, Conn. : 

" Written in a sprightly and popular 
manner. Full of interest." 
EVANGELICAL MESSENGER, 
Cleveland : 

" Everybody can read the book with 
interest, but the young will be specially 
profited by its perusal." 
LEIC ESTER CHR O NICL E, Eng- 
land : 

" A work of the deepest interest and 
uf ingnlar ability." 



286 



COMMEMCIAIj GAZETTJE, Cin- 
cinnati : 
" One of the most popular books pub- 
Jished lately." 

CENTHAL METJELOJDIST, Ken- 
tucky : 
" This is a choice work — full of fact 
and biography. It will be read with in- 
terest, more especially by that large 
class whose awl and hammer provide the 
human family with soles for their feet." 



TSE WESTEBN MAIZ, England : 
" Written with taste and tact, in a 
graceful, easy style. A book most in- 
teresting to youth." 

CMItISTtA.N GXTJ^MDIJiNf To- 
ronto : 
" It is a capital book." 
EVANGELICAL CSUHCM- 
Man, Toronto: 
"This is a most Interesting book, 
written in a very popular style." 



V. 



Flotsam and Jetsam. 



SATURDAY MEVIEW, Eng. : 

"Amusing and readable. , . . Among 
the successful books of this order must 
be classed that which Mr. Bowles has re- 
cently ofPered to the public." 

NEW YORK WORLD: 

" This series of reflections, some phil- 
osophic, others practical, and many hu- 
morous, make a cheerful and healthful 
little volume, made the more valuable 
by its index." 

CENTRAL METSODIST, Cat- 
tlesburgh, Ky. : 

" This is a romance of the sea, and is 
one of the most readable and enjoyable 
books of the season." 

LUTSERAN OBSERVER, Phil. : 
" The cargo on this wreck must have 
been above all estimate in value. How 
much ' Jetsam ' there may be we cannot 
tell, but what we have seen is all ' Flot- 
sam,' and will float and find its way in 
enriching influence to a thousand hearts 
and homes." 

NEW TORK HERALD: 

"It is a clever book, full of quaint 
conceits and deep meditation. There 
is plenty of entertaining and original 
thought, and ' Flotsam and Jetsam ' is 
indeed worth reading." 

CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, Nash- 
ville, Tenn. : 
" Many of the author's comments are 
quite acute, and their personal tone will 
give them an additional flavor." 



METHODIST RECORDER, Pitts- 
burgh, Pa. : 
"In addition to the charming inci- 
dents related, it fairly sparkles with fresh 
and original thoughts which cannot fail 
to interest and profit." 

GOOD LITERATURE, New York: 
"... Never fails to amuse and inter- 
est, and it is one of the pleasantest feat- 
ures of the book that one may open it at 
a venture and be sure of finding Bome- 
thing original and readable." 

HERALD AND PRESBYTER, 

Cincinnati, Ohio : 
" His manner of telling the story of his 
varied observations and experiences, with 
his reflections accompanying, is so easy 
and familiar, as to lend bis pages a fas- 
cination which renders it almost impos- 
sible to lay down the book until it is read 
to the end." 

NEW YORK LEDGER: 

" It is quite out of the usual method of 
books of travel, and will be relished all 
the more by those who enjoy bits of 
quiet humor and piquant sketches of 
men and things on a yachting journey." 

NEW YORK STAR : 

"Not too profound for entertainment, 
and yet pleasantly suggestive. A volume 
of clever sayings." 

CHRISTIAN SECRETARY, 

Hartford, Conn. : 
"It is a book well worth reading, . . , 
full of thought." 



287 



PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL, 

Philadelphia : 
"A racy, original, thoughtfal book. 
On the slight thread of sea-voyaging it 
hangs the terse thoughts of an original 
mind on many (subjects. The style is so 
spicy that one reads with interest even 
when not approving." 



CHRISTIAN INTELLIGEN- 
CER, New York : 
" No one can spend an hour or two in 
Mr. Bowles' gallery of graphic pen-pict- 
ures without being so deeply impressed 
with their originality of conception and 
lively, epicy expression, as to talk about 
them to others." 



VI. 



The Highways of Literature. 



NATIONAL BAPTIST, Phila. : 

" A book full of wisdom ; exceedingly 
bright and practical.'' 

PACIFIC CHURCHMAN, San 

Francisco : 
" The best answer we have seen to the 
common and most puzzling question, 
'What shall I read?' Scholarly and 
beautiful." 

n ANBURY NEWS: 

"Its hints, rules, and directions for 
reading are, just now, what thousands 
of people are needing." 

CHRISTIAN WITNESS, New- 
market, N. H. : 
" Clear, terse, elegant in style. A boon 



to young students, a pleasure for schol- 
ars." 

NEW YORK HERALD: 

"Mr. David Pryde, the author of 
' Highways of Literature ; or, What to 
Read, and How to Read,' is an erudite 
Scotchman who has taught with much 
success in Edinburgh. His hints on the 
best books and the best method of mas- 
tering them are valuable, and likely to 
prove of great practical use." 
NEW YORK TABLET: 

" This is a most useful and interesting 
work. It consists of papers in which 
the author offers rules by which the 
reader may discover the best books, and 
be enabled to study them properly." 



VII. 



Colin Clout's Calendar. 



LEEDS MERCURY, England : 

"The best specimens of popular sci- 
entific expositions that we have ever 
had the good fortune to fall in with." 
NEW YORK NATION: 

" The charm of such books is not a 
little heightened when, as in this case, 
a few touches of local history, of cus- 
toms, words, and places are added." 
AMERICAN REFORMER, New 
York: 
•' There certainly is no deterioration in 
the quality of the books of the Standard 
LiBBABT. This book consists of short 



chapters upon natural history, written 
in an easy, fascinating style, giving rare 
and valuable information concerning 
trees, plants, flowers, and animals. Such 
books should have a wide circulation 
beyond the list of regular subscribers. 
Some will criticise the author's inclina- 
tion to attribute the marvellous things 
which are found in these plants, animals, 
etc., to a long process of development 
rather than to Divine agency. But the 
information is none the less valuable, 
whatever may be the process of these 
developments." 



288 



JL C3-z^Ejv^T sjloe.z:fio:ei. 



Toong's Analytical Concordance 

MJEDUCJ^n TO $2. SO, 



Dr. Young cannot endure to have this, the great work of his life, judged by the un- 
authorized editions with which the American market Is flooded. These editions, he feels, 
do his work and the American public great Injustice. 

That Americans may be able to see the work as printed under his eye and from kU own 
plates, he will sell some thousands of copies at 

A Great Pecuniary Sacrifice. 

The Bale at the reduced prices will begin March 1, 1883, and will continue until tha 
thousands of copies set apart for this sale are exhausted. This is the authorized, latett 
revined and unabridged edition— in every respect the same type, paper, binding, etc., as we 
have sold at the higher prices. 

It la a burning shame that the great life-work of one of the most eminent scholars, a 
work pronounced In both Europe and America as one of the most laborious and Important 
that this century has produced, embracing nearly 1100 large quarto pages, each larger and 
containing more matter than Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, should prove a great 
financial loss to Its author ! 

This great work Is selling In England at |9, and Is now imported and sold In America 
at $2.50!! 

Orders ttUI be filled In the order receired np to the time of the exhaustion 

of tho stocko 



YouNG'8 Great Concordance. 

DO l^OT BE D£€EITI:D. 

There ia but one authorized and correct edition of Toung's Concordance sold 
in America. Every copy of this edition has on the title-page the words 

"Authorized Edition," and at the bottom of the page the imprint 

Nbw Tobk : FimK & Wagnalls. Edinburgh : Georgb Adam Toung & Compant. 

All copies, no matter by whom sold, that have not these words printed on the title-page 
are printed on the bungling plates made by the late American Book Exchange. 

Dr. TorrNG says : " This unauthorized American edition Is an outrage on the American 
public, and on me, containing gross errors." 

Rev. Dk. John HAiiL Bays : 

" Dr. Eobert Young's Analytical Concordance is worthy of the lifetime of labor he has 
spent upon it. I deeply regret that his natural and just expectation of some return from 
its sale on this side of the ocean is not realized; and I hope the sense of justice to a 
Moat painstaking author will lead to the choice by many purcnasers of the edition which 
Dr. loung approves— that of Messrs. Funk & Waqnalls, with whom Dr. Young co- 
operates in bringing out here the best edition. 

"NbwYokk. JOHN HALL." 

Do not be deceived by misrepresentations. Insist that your bookseller furnish you the 
Authorized edition. 

REDUCED PRICES: 

liOO quarto pages (each larger than a page in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary), Cloth, |2 SO 

Sheep 4 00 

French im. morocco 4 SO 

Sent post-free. 

NK & WAQNALLS, 10 & 12 Dey Street. New York. 



THK STANDARD SERIBS. 

Sest Sooks fbr a Trifle. % 

Thesk books are printed in readable type, on fair paper, and are bound in postal 
card manilla. 

These books are printed wholly without abridgment, escept Canon Parrar's "Life 
Qf Christ " and his " Life of Paul." 



No, Price. 

1. John Ploughman's Talk. C. H. 
Spnrgeoa. On Choice of Books. 
Thomas Carlyle. 4to. Both.... $0 12 

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Hughes. 4to 10 

3. Essays. Lord Macaulay. 4to... 15 

4. Liirhtof Asia. Edwin Arnold. 4to. 15 

5. Imitation of Christ, Thomas a 
Kcmpis. 4to 15 

6-7. Life of Christ, Canon Farrar. 

4to 50 

a. Essays. Thomas Carlyle. 4to.. 20 
9-10. Life and Work of St. Paul, 

Canon Farrar. 4to 2 parts, both 50 
11. Self-Culture. Prof. J. S. Blackie. 

4to. 2 parts, both 10 

12-19. Popular History of England, 

Chas. Knight. 4to 2 80 

20-21. Rui^kin's Letters to Workmen 

and Laborers!. 4to. 2 parts, both 30 

22. Idyl 8 of the King. Alfred Tenny- 
son. 4to 20 

23. Life of Rowland Hill, Rev. V. J. 
Charlesworth. 4ro 15 

04. Town Geology. Charles Kings- 
ley. 4to 15 

25. Alfred the Great. Thos, Hughes. 

4to .. 20 

28. Outdoor Life in Europe. Rev. E. 

P. Thwing. 4to 20 

27. Calamities of Authors, I, D'ls- 
raeli. 4to 20 

28. Salon of Madame Necker. Part L 

4to 15 

29. Ethics of the Dust. JohnRuskin. 

4to 15 

20-31. Memories of My Exile. Louis 

Kossuth. 4to 40 

32. Mister Horn and His Friends. 

Illustrated. 4to 15 

33-34. Orations of Demosthenes. 4to. 40 

35. Frondes Agrestes. John Rus- 

kin. 4to 15 

36. Joan of Arc, Alphonse de La- 
martine. 4to 10 

3T. Thoughts of M. Aurelius Anto- 
ninus. 4to 15 

38. Salon of Madame Necker. Part 

II. 4to 55 

39. The Hermits. Chas. Kingsley. 4to. 15 

40. John Ploughman's Pictures. C. 

H. Spurseon. 4to 15 

41. Pulpit Table-Talk. Dean Ram- 
say. 4to 10 

42. Bible and Newspaper. C. H. 
Spurgeon. 4to 15 

43. Lacon. Rev, C. C. Colton. 4to. 20 



>'o. Frice. 

44. Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. 

4to ^ 20 

45. America Revisited. George Au- 
gustus Sala. 4to 20 

46. Life of C. H. Spurgeon. 8vo -20 

47. John Calvin. M. Guizot. 4to. . 15 
48-49. Dickens' Christmas Books. 

Illustrated. 8vo 50 

50. Shairp's Culture and Religion. 8vo. 15 
51-52. Godet's Commentary on Luke. 
Ed.by Dr. John Hall. 8vo,aparts, 

both 2 00 

53. Diary of a Minister's Wife. Part 

I. 8vo 15 

54-57. Van Doren's Suggestive Com- 
mentary on Luke. New edition, 
enlarged. 8vo 3 00 

58. Diary of a Minister's Wife. Part 

IL 8vo 15 

59. The Nutritive Cure. .Dr. Robert 
Walter. 8vo 15 

60. Sartor Resartus. Thomas Car- 
lyle. 4to 25 

61-62. Lothair. Lord Beaconsfleld. 

8vo 50 

63. The Persian Queen and Other 
Pictures of Truth. Rev. E. P. 
Thwing. 8vo 10 

64, Salon of Madame Necker. Part 

IIL 4to 15 

65-66. The Popular History of Eng- 
lish Bible Translation. H. P. Co- 
nant. 8vo. Price both parts ... 50 

67, IngersoU Answered. Joseph Par- 
ker, D.D. 8vo 15 

68-69. Studies in Mark. D. C. 

Hughes. 8vo, in two parts 60 

70. Job's Comforters. A Religious 
Satire. Joseph Parker, D.D. (.Lon- 
don.) 12mo 10 

7L The Revisers' English. G.Wash- 
ington Moon, F^R.S.L. 12mo.. 20 

72. The Conversion of Children. Rev. 
Edward Pays^on Hammond. 12mo 30 

73. New Testament Helps. Rev. W. 

F. Crafts. 8vo 20 

74. Opium — England's Coercive Poli- 
cy. Rev. Jno. Liggins. Svo 10 

75. Blood of Jesus. Rev. Wm. A. 
Reid. With Introduction by E. 

P. Hammond. 12mo 10 

76. Lesson in the Closet for 18^3. 
Charles F. Deems. D D. i2mo.. 20 

77-78. Heroes and Holidays. Rev. 

W. F. Crafts. 12mo. 2 pts.. both 30 
79. Reminiscences of Rev. Lyman 

teecher, D.D. Svo 13 



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"Every issue of this library may be relied on as a desirable and nec- 
essary one." — Boston Globe. 



STANDARD LIBRARY BOOKS. 

1. INDIA, WHAT CAN IT TEACH US ? By Max Mulleb. This 

American Edition contains Introduction and Notes by Prof. Alexander 
Wilder ; also Notes by American Publishers. 

This book, although learned, is easily understood ; it is written by one whose 
eeholarship is known all over the world. 

2. HISTORICAL AND OTHER STUDIES. By J. A. Fkoude. Ar- 

ranged for publication by D. H. Wheeler, LL.D. With Introduction. 

Proude is doubtless the ablest of living historians. These papers are in his most 
popular style. 

A new Book by Rev. Chakles H. Spubgeon. 



3. 



^ Published from advanqed sheets sent us by Mr. Spurgeon. 
Mr. Spurgeon'e thousands of friends in America are rejoiced at every aunounee- 
ment of a new book from his pen. Perhaps no living man has so large and enthusiastic a 
host of readers in Europe and America. 

4. ARTISAN LIFE IN THE TIME OF JESUS. By Prof. Fbaitz 

Delitzsch, of the University at Leipzig, Germany. Translated for this 
publication from the latest revised edition by Bemhard Pick, Ph.D. 

No name is a greater tower of strength among scholars in Germany than is that 
of Prof. Delitzsch. 

5. BY-WAYS OF LITERATURE. By D. H. Wheblbb, LL.D., Pres- 

ident of Allegheny College. 

Animated and scholarly, showing some historical aspects of morals, education, and 
language in England and America. 






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